"At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust." —John McCain, Feb. 21, 2008
In fact, McCain has betrayed his public trust.
Only eight days in February before whitewashing his cozy relationship with TV mogul Bud Paxson and Paxson's lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, McCain shamelessly executed another of his slick flip-flops, something that's a habit with the self-styled "Straight Talk" McCain.
Using doublespeak, he abandoned his opposition to torture and demeaning treatment of terrorist suspects and voted against congressional legislation containing the very language McCain had championed.
Why? For the same reason McCain withdrew his denunciation of evangelical extremists as "agents of intolerance." For political support.
Those who know McCain understand this. He's obsessed with winning, especially winning the presidency. His carefully crafted façade as a "maverick" was merely a stunt to romance naïve national media when invited aboard McCain's bus for cozy coffee klatches.
Now he's selectively doing 180-degree turns and advocating what he once denounced.
The latest is his worst betrayal yet.
After disclosures of U.S. troops dehumanizing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and CIA interrogators using torture on suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in secret overseas prisons, McCain used his prestige as a former POW in Vietnam to denounce torture as beneath the higher values of the United States.
He implored President Bush to stop torture, including the merciless cruelty of waterboarding, because the same brutality might be used in revenge against captured American GIs.
By 2005, McCain and Congress had persuaded Bush to ban torture.
"We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists," McCain said while standing alongside President Bush in the Oval Office. "What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are. And I think this will help enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror."
But by Feb. 14, when he needed Bush's endorsement for the Republican presidential nomination, McCain opposed the new anti-torture bill because, he said in a disjointed and contradictory statement, the bill would force the CIA to adhere to Geneva Convention interrogation methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual--a book McCain hailed earlier as a model for treatment of prisoners.
McCain is a not a man to be trusted. If he's willing to barter his principles for politics, heaven knows what he might trade away as president.
