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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Thursday, December 15, 2005

McCain wins on Torture Ban?

This is great news. I'm not really surprised that the White House caved on this after yesterday's vote in the House, but I'll be really curious to hear the announcement to see if McCain won on the provision regarding this defense for CIA personnel.

(AP) WASHINGTON - After months of resistance, the White House has agreed to accept Sen. John McCain's call for a law specifically banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror, several congressional officials said Thursday.

(Later) It's official. Both sides have announced an agreement, and the CIA defense provison stayed in. McCain got everything. He didn't have to give up on one point from what I've read so far. WaPo version, NYTimes version. Nothing further in either one.

And just as an aside, as a commenter pointed out a couple of days ago, how far has the great ideal of America fallen that we're ecstatic about this?

Sort of Related: Today is the first day of the window in which to expect a ruling on releasing the rest of the Abu Ghraib materials, photos, videos, reports, etc. I don't remember the window dates specifically, I just remember the irony that the first possible ruling date was on the day of the Iraqi elections.

And, while I'm at it. This is totally unrelated, but it made me laugh out loud. A letter from the "War on Christmas."

3 Comments:

  • This is bullshit. If they make it look like they're caving to McCain you can bet they've already got it worked out how they can continue without anyone knowing. Witness your post above about the secret spying. They'll just do it and not tell anybody. If anybody catches them (and no chance of that in some secret hole in Syria or Bulgaria) they'll just say, "So what? We were protecting you. Remember 9/11?".

    By Blogger Neil Shakespeare, at 10:10 PM  

  • Don't believe it.

    http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/bush-caved.html

    By Blogger greyhair, at 10:12 PM  

  • I think to some degree your right Greyhair. I've been focusing on the immunity issues because I take what you're saying as pretty much a given. Certainly gonna blog more on this tomorrow when I have a little time and I'll make it a point to throw your two cents in.

    Also, somebody, somewhere maybe even somewhere else in the comments made the observation that the Whitehouse may just be pulling back for PR and letting Duncan "secure seat" hunter take up the battle on the house side for them.

    More tomorrow. Thanks for contributing.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:40 PM  

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