Fox News interviews John McCain and its beginning to look like the Straight-talk express may be back on track. Good answers about government, McCain-Feingold, the War on Terror, and all while keeping it free of mud-slinging. I've been a McCain supporter for quite some time and its nice to see him getting back to Straight-talk and away from trying to make a statement about standing behind a failed President, even if the policies he is standing behind are appropriate we need to see the Straight-talker be more than a yes man from time to time and not allow Bush's failures to cast their shadow on him by not doing so.
Excerpts:
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.
Spot on!
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WALLACE: Governor Romney, Mitt Romney, outside the Beltway, but obviously an opponent of yours, says that you flipped — said it today, you've flipped on taxes, you've flipped on ethanol, you've flipped on Roe vs. Wade.
First of all, how do you feel about being called a flip-flopper by Mitt Romney?
J. MCCAIN: Well, look, I'm not going to respond to that. I'm simply not going to respond to it. I'm not into that now and I won't respond to it.
Class, it has been so missing from politics lately.
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J. MCCAIN: Before we get into any of those specifics, you have to know that anyone who gets out front on this issue without sitting down and negotiating with everything on the table will get nowhere.
And so I will do what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did. I will sit down with the Democrats. We will look at the options on the table. We'll call in the smartest people that we can find, and we'll reach an agreement.
If I take a position on any of those issues right now, one, it doesn't work. And second of all, it's got to be the product of bipartisan negotiations where people sit down across a table from one another.
Bipartisanship, such a lovely word, and McCain has the history ala Gang of 14 to back it up as more than rhetoric.
The complete interview is here
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