Another veto from Bush
(posted by Paige)
Here’s another chapter in the ongoing tug-of-war between Bush and Congress over the use of interrogation methods widely considered to be torture. While Congress works to eliminate such tactics from the toolbox of intelligence agents, Bush continues to use fear tactics to shame Congress into relenting:
Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the [CIA] from using such interrogation methods, which include waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad.
The Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
McCain’s “Opposition to Torture” (TM) branding, such as it was, was about all he was good for. Now he’s not even good for that. So when he’s not actively harmful, McCain’s about as useful as titties on a fish.
March 8th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Ah, Paige, you beat me to it on that NYT piece. All I’d add is that the reporter got the above wrong: Waterboarding is not a mere “threat” of drowning. It induces the complete and terrifying sensation that one is drowning. Which is why it is torture.
March 8th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
How many bills has he vetoed now? Only a handful, I think, and just about all for bad reasons.
(I know some libertarians might argue that vetoing the stem cell funding bill was a good thing from a libertarian perspective, and maybe it was, depending on one’s view of federal science funding. Still, this was never about fiscal discipline and the role of government.)
March 8th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
According to the NYTimes article quoted above, this veto is “only the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the last 10 months with Democrats in control of Congress.”