Sunday, April 29, 2007

McCain Seems to Have Gotten the Message

I recently posted that the direction McCain had been going had me worried. However from his recent TV appearances he seems to have gotten his ducks in a row and seems to be back to his old no BSing self. Which is the only way he stands a chance of winning in my opinion. Take for example this snippet of his recent interview on Fox:

WALLACE: How would you fight the War on Terror differently than it's being fought now?

J. MCCAIN: I would probably announce the closing of Guantanamo Bay. I would move those detainees to Fort Leavenworth. I would announce we will not torture anyone.

I would announce that climate change is a big issue, because we've got some image problems in the world. I think that we've got to understand — diplomatic, intelligence-wise.

Clearly, in the area of, quote, "propaganda," in the area of the war of ideas, we are not winning as much as — well, in some ways we are behind.

Al-Jazeera and others maybe, in the view of some — my view — may sometimes do a better job than we are.

At the end of the day, it's how people make up their minds as to whether they want to embrace our values, our standards, our ideals, or whether they want to go the path of radical Islamic extremism, which is an affront to everything we stand for and believe in.

WALLACE: Senator, you talked about torture. Former CIA Director Tenet now says that the intelligence that they got from harsh interrogation techniques against some of these big Al Qaida types, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the intelligence they got from them using, reportedly, things like water-boarding, extreme temperatures, was more valuable than all the other CIA and FBI programs.

Were you wrong? I mean, this is the CIA, former CIA director, saying this. Were you wrong to limit what CIA interrogators could do?

J. MCCAIN: A man I admire more than anyone else, General Jack Vessey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, battlefield commission, told me once — he said, "John, any intelligence information we might gain through the use of torture could never, ever counterbalance the image that it does — the damage that it does to our image in the world."

I agree with him. Look at the war in Algeria. Look, the fact is if you torture someone, they're going to tell you anything they think you want to know. It is an affront to everything we stand for and believe in.

It's interesting to me that every retired military officer, whether it be Colin Powell or whether it be former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — everybody who's been in war doesn't want to torture people and think that it's the wrong thing to do. And history shows that.

We cannot torture people and maintain our moral superiority in the world.

WALLACE: But when...

J. MCCAIN: And that's a fact.

WALLACE: But when George Tenet says...

J. MCCAIN: I don't care what George Tenet says. I know what's right. I know what's morally right as far as America's behavior.

WALLACE: But if I may, sir...

J. MCCAIN: Yes, sir.

WALLACE: ... when George Tenet says we saved live through some of these techniques...

J. MCCAIN: I don't accept it. I don't accept that fundamental thesis, because it's never worked throughout history.

And so again, I know this for a fact, and anyone who's had experience with this, I think, that's — well, the people I respect will tell you that if you inflect enough physical pain on someone, they will tell you anything they think you want to know in order to relieve that pain.

That's just a fundamental fact. And we've gotten a huge amount of misinformation as well as other information from these techniques.

In my opinion the only way McCain can win is to be unique not an older wiser version of W and thereby pull in enough swing voters to clinch it. The far right doesn't and isn't going to trust him and his major current hurdle is beating Giuliani in the primaries. Although he has one concrete advantage over Giuliani in that regard. There are no pictures of John McCain in drag.