John McCain just might pitch a curveball

Apparently John McCain's campaign has floated the trial balloon of a Jewish running mate -- and not the boring-as-plain-matzah Joe Lieberman: A young Jewish congressman from the battleground state of Virginia has joined the shortlist to be John McCain's vice-presidential running mate.


With strong backing from hard-line conservatives, Eric Cantor [right] would shore up many of John McCain's weaknesses Photo: AP

Eric Cantor, 45, would be a dramatic choice for Mr McCain, who is running almost level with Barack Obama in national polls but whose aides believe he needs to shake-up the White House race if he is to prevail in November's general election.

Aides to Mr McCain revealed that Mr Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives, had been asked to submit documents as part of a rigorous vetting process to hunt out any closet skeletons.

He joins a shortlist believed to include Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and Mr McCain's bitter rival during the Republican primaries, Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota governor, and Rob Portman, a former Ohio congressman and budget director in the Bush administration.

Of the four, Mr Cantor would be by far the most exiting - though potentially risky - choice. A prodigious fundraiser with a young, photogenic family, support from evangelical Christians and strong backing from hard-line conservatives, he would shore up many of Mr McCain's weaknesses.

Mr Cantor would be the first Jewish vice-president, an historic milestone that Senator Joe Lieberman just missed in 2000 when Al Gore lost to George W Bush by 567 votes.

It was probably Mr Lieberman's presence on the ticket that enabled Mr Gore to get so close in Florida, where Jewish voters are an important factor. Mr Lieberman has since left the Democratic party and joined forces with Mr McCain. Campaigning by both Mr Lieberman for a McCain-Cantor ticket in Florida could give the Republican a powerful advantage in the swing state.

Virginia has been a traditionally Republican state but is very much in play in 2008 after a steady trend towards Democrats. Mr Obama is strongly considering choosing Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia, as his running mate.

It might be a good move: it would throw a monkey wrench into Obama's efforts to reassure the Jewish community that he's good for Israel. It also makes it tough to paint McCain as in the pocket of the Christian Right.

Triangulating McCain

John Bicknell at Congressional Quarterly hits the nail squarely on the head: The Real Conservative Conundrum: A President McCain Working With a Democratic Congress.

Conservatives who have opposed McCain during the campaign have cited his positions on a range of issues — immigration, campaign finance, climate change, tax cuts, legal rights for detainees — where he has sided with Democrats.

But the positions McCain has taken are only part of the problem for conservatives.

As president, with a Democratic Congress, it is the other part — the stylistic part — that will prove to be a much greater problem for conservatives.

When McCain has been on the conservative side, as he has been on the vast majority of issues, he gives it full-throated support. He is not afraid of giving offense to appropriators when he sticks up for cutting spending, and he has not been shy about deriding Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq, to cite two potent examples.

But when he is with the Democrats, he is really with them. McCain is not someone who simply reaches across the aisle to form coalitions with the other side. He walks across the aisle, puts on the other team’s uniform and sings the other team’s fight song.

If he wants to accomplish things — and every president wants to accomplish things — he will have to do so on the Democrats’ terms.

That means his agenda will include those things on which he agrees with the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate:

• A cap and trade regime for climate change.

• Expansion of McCain-Feingold regulations for campaign finance.

• Expanded legal rights for enemy combatants, and probably the closing of Guantanamo.

• Comprehensive immigration overhaul, with a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.

This will not be a “reaching across the aisle.” This will be a full partnership of the president and the Congress, who just happen to be of different parties. The shrunken GOP minority in the Senate might serve as a brake, especially on immigration. But it will be only a brake, not a standing astride history yelling “stop!”

Compare and contrast (excerpt from same article):

In his victory speech on Super Tuesday, McCain laid out his GOP credentials.

“I am a Republican because, like you, I want to relieve the American people of the heavy hand of a government,” he said. “I am a Republican because, like you, I believe government must defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively,” he said. “I am a Republican because I believe, like you, that government should tax us no more than necessary, spend no more than necessary,” he promised.

And, he said, “I am a Republican because I believe the judges we appoint to the federal bench must understand that enforcing our laws, not making them, is their only responsibility.”

Except that he's likely to be so busy selling out conservatives on the things the Democrats want that he's unlikely to be able to push back on those same Democrats for the conservative values (lower taxation, less government, non-activist judges and strong defense) that he claims he wants too. The Democrats are willing to accept compromise from opponents but never offer it in return (unless their re-election prospects are on the line): they're funny that way.

"... it would require an act of deep duplicity by Mr. McCain."

In his Feb. 7 Wonder Land column in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger advises conservatives to shut up and get with the McCain program:

Conservatives, for whom any glass is always half full, have sold themselves short. Notwithstanding the moderate pedigrees of the three major GOP candidates on entry, all emerged from the debates as Reagan conservatives on what matters: taxes, spending, regulation and national defense. Most of the worrisome moderate positions were in the past.

When Reaganomics appeared in the late 1970s, the Republican establishment mocked it. Voodoo economics, someone said. Today for a Republican presidential candidate, it's gospel.

This is an achievement.

Some will say the debate promises were just politics. As opposed to what? Presumably moving people toward one's position is the point of all this daily political heavy-lifting. To now call a candidate's embrace of your ideas unacceptable is churlish and self-defeating. Conservatives won a decades-long debate in their party. Bank it. The demand now that Sen. McCain repudiate that old vote on the Bush tax cuts is an attempt at public humiliation. Ain't gonna happen. If life doesn't work for you without public penance, join a monastery.

Most of the distrust of the McCain candidacy is rooted in personal ill will. He's a hard case, and activists are often brittle. The fear is that one of the strongest impulses in a McCain presidency will be payback, and that he might sell out conservatives on taxes and the judiciary. That is possible, though by now it would require an act of deep duplicity by Mr. McCain. Here again, the conservatives should show more self-confidence.

Hmm... I don't think conservatives lack self-confidence. Rather, they are all too confident in their knowledge that Senator McCain is capable of acts of deep duplicity. Bill Clinton ran as a centrist and immediately began to govern as a hard-left liberal, until Newt Gingrich and the new GOP majority in Congress forced him to "triangulate" back to the center. Who in Congress will force a President McCain to triangulate, and in which direction? What in his record in the Senate indicates that he would even wish to stand up to Congressional Democrats to defend conservative domestic policies -- especially given the likelihood that they will demand he cave to their domestic policy priorities in return for allowing him some leeway on foreign policy and military affairs?

Sorry, Red Cross inspectors -- US military beat you to it

This is good news. U.S. Frees 42 al-Qaida Captives in Raid

BAGHDAD (AP) -- U.S. forces raided an al-Qaida hide-out northeast of Baghdad on Sunday and freed 42 Iraqis imprisoned inside, including some who had been tortured and suffered broken bones, a senior U.S. military official said Sunday.

So the International Committee of the Red Cross sent its inspectors into the al-Qaeda prison and found evidence of torture, right?

Oh, wait, I forgot. While US Armed Forces are required by law to give al-Qaeda terrorists the courtesies of the Geneva Conventions (thanks, Senator McCain!), al-Qaeda feels no obligation to reciprocate such niceties. So who ratted out the location of this "prison"? Did Amnesty International avert its gaze from Israel and the US long enough to notice this atrocity and let the US military know about it? Not quite:

The raid was part of a 3-month-old security crackdown that included the deployment of 3,000 more U.S. troops to Diyala, a violent province north of the capital that has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq.

Caldwell said Iraqis told U.S. forces about the hide-out: "The people in Diyala are speaking up against al-Qaida."

Whoa -- you mean, the troop surge, combined with Iraqi citizens providing intelligence on al-Qaeda operations, is resulting in things like torture victims being freed? Whatever you do, don't tell Nancy Pelosi. She likes to think of Syria as the only force for good in the Middle East.

Not to worry, it's in the manual

On The Smoking Gun's website, we have this interesting news item:

MAY 24--In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses. Photos showing injuries sustained by those captives can be found here. (12 pages)

(By the way, sorry if you clicked on these links and were shocked or sickened by the images. I would have warned you, but life sometimes comes upon you without warning -- and without editing.)

Should we in the West be outraged by this discovery? Why isn't it front-page news in all of the mainstream newspapers, or the lead story on all the nightly newscasts?

Could it be that members of the mainstream media don't expect any better from Arabs? It's possible -- they expect the United States Armed Forces to perform their jobs impeccably and above any moral reproach, and boy, do they dish out the moral reproach when they detect anything less than perfection on the part of United States personnel. But perhaps Muslim terrorists yanking out eyeballs is too much of a dog-bites-man story to rate much interest in Western newsrooms.

Maybe it doesn't fit the template of noble freedom fighters battling Western imperialist oppression. After all, The Minutemen hid behind rocks and trees instead of fighting in orderly ranks, but at least they didn't routinely dismember the British troops they took prisoner, or detonate wagonloads of gunpowder in the middle of crowded markets in Philadelphia or Boston.

Or maybe it's because the al-Qaeda folks are following the standard that Sen. John McCain says American military personnel should follow -- namely, the manual:

MR. McCAIN. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment that would (1) establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees and (2) prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in the detention of the U.S. government....

The first part of this amendment would establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees. The Army Field Manual and its various editions have served America well, through wars against both regular and irregular foes. It embodies the values Americans have embraced for generations, while preserving the ability of our interrogators to extract critical intelligence from ruthless foes. Never has this been more important than today, in the midst of the war on terror.

This amendment would establish the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogation of all detainees held in DOD custody. The Manual has been developed by the Executive Branch for its own uses, and a new edition, written to take into account the needs of the war on terror and with a new classified annex, is due to be issued soon. My amendment would not set the Field Manual in stone – it could be changed at any time.

The advantage of setting a standard for interrogation based on the Field Manual is to cut down on the significant level of confusion that still exists with respect to which interrogation techniques are allowed. Confusion about the rules results in abuses in the field. We need a clear, simple, and consistent standard, and we have it in the Army Field Manual on Interrogation. That’s not just my opinion, but that of many more distinguished military minds than mine, including General Colin Powell, General Joseph Hoar, General John Shalikashvili, RADM John Hutson, and RADM Don Guter.

These and other distinguished officers believe that the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere took place in part because our soldiers received ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what the Field Manual allows, and that, had the Manual been followed across the board, we could have avoided the prisoner abuse scandal. Mr. President, wouldn’t any of us do whatever we could to have prevented that? By enacting this amendment, our service members can follow the Manual consistently from now on. Our troops deserve no less.

So there's the McCain standard, you see: it's okay if it's in the manual. And of course, if that's the standard for US forces, it should be the standard for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

May I offer one suggestion? Can't we agree to have both sides operate from the same manual? If al-Qaeda doesn't want to adopt ours, then we should adopt theirs.

Just to make it fair, you know.

The best immigration bill that can pass (this) Congress

On Tuesday in Texas, John McCain spoke again of his comprehensive immigration reform bill:

"I think it's a matter of national security," McCain said, "and to do nothing — to leave the status quo — would be an abrogation of our responsibilities to the American people."

McCain, speaking amid a series of fundraisers in Houston, added, "If they've got another proposal that will pass the Congress of the United States, then let's hear that."

Let's detour to Monday in Oklahoma, where McCain expanded on the national security theme:

"We have 12 million people. We don't know where they are or what they're doing," McCain said to reporters after speaking to members of the Oklahoma House. "We've got to secure our borders."

McCain said he met with Oklahoma lawmakers who supported sweeping state immigration legislation that Gov. Brad Henry signed into law on May 8. Among other things, the measure would deny most public benefits to illegal aliens, target employers who hire illegal aliens and provide protections to citizens and legal immigrants who lose their jobs to illegal immigrants.

"They passed that legislation because they were frustrated, understandably. The federal government did not carry out its responsibilities," McCain said.

He said border control is a federal responsibility. "That means fences, that means walls," McCain said.

If our national security is at stake (and it is), then that's what ought to be fixed first and foremost, before anyone worries about "normalizing" illegal aliens. McCain's grand compromise pretends to put border security -- "fences and walls," along with electronic employment eligibility verification and other measures -- ahead of normalization by making the vaunted Z-visa contingent on the "trigger" of implementation of these security measures.

However, between the time the bill becomes law and the time the trigger measures are in place, illegal aliens will have a provisional authorization to work and travel -- so who needs a Z-visa? Moreover, the provisional status becomes valid if a background check doesn't show up anything unusual -- by the end of the next business day. Doesn't allow for much time to turn up anything on the applicant, does it? Of course, the more extensive background check that follows the "instant read" will be more reliable and no doubt won't take too much longer to complete, right?

`(1) IN GENERAL- An alien who files an application under subsection (a)(1)(A) for adjustment of status, including a spouse or child who files for adjustment of status under subsection (b)--

`(A) shall be granted employment authorization pending final adjudication of the alien's application for adjustment of status;

`(B) shall be granted permission to travel abroad pursuant to regulation pending final adjudication of the alien's application for adjustment of status;

`(C) shall not be detained, determined inadmissible or deportable, or removed pending final adjudication of the alien's application for adjustment of status, unless the alien commits an act which renders the alien ineligible for such adjustment of status; and

`(D) shall not be considered an unauthorized alien as defined in section 274A(i) until such time as employment authorization under subparagraph (A) is denied.

All of which applies, of course, only to those aliens who come forward to apply. What of those who don't meet the requirements for application, or who have good reasons -- say, a criminal background or terrorist connections -- not to apply? There seems to be no provision in this bill for those folks.

McCain is right that allowing the status quo to continue is an abrogation of Congress's duties. He is also right that this bill is probably the best that can pass the current Congress. But what he fails to see is that the appropriate action is not to pass this bill, but to change the composition of Congress to get one that can pass a real border security bill on its own merits.

If Senators like Ted Kennedy are willing to hold border security hostage as a bargaining chip to get benefits for illegal aliens, they should be required to make that strategy clear to the American electorate. Not all of them would get turfed out in 2008, but it's likely enough of them would that we might finally get a Congress able and willing to implement border security. Then, and only then, should we deal with the question of absorption of the most anodyne of the illegal aliens currently in the US -- as well as the identification and disposition of all of the other illegal aliens currently here.

Someone tell John McCain

Senator John McCain pushed through last year's amendment bearing his name granting certain protections to persons detained by the United States and especially under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. Still, he claims he has no tender spot in his heart for such persons, but that our values require us to treat them tenderly:

Let me close by noting that I hold no brief for the prisoners. I do hold a brief for the reputation of the United States of America. We are Americans. We hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people, no matter how evil or terrible they may be. To do otherwise undermines our security, but it also undermines our greatness as a nation. We are not simply any other country. We stand for something more in the world, a moral mission, one of freedom and democracy and human rights at home and abroad. We are better than these terrorists, and we will win. The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don't deserve our sympathy. But this isn't about who they are; this is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies.

He also believes that our treatment of enemy combatants will affect the enemy's treatment of our captured soldiers:

I would like to believe that this is the last war in which the United States will ever be involved. I would like to believe that from now on, after we win this war on terror, we will have peace and the United States will never send its men and women in harm's way again. History shows me otherwise. What happens in the next conflict when American military personnel are held captive by the enemy and they make the argument, with some validity, that we have violated the rules of war? What happens to our men and women in the military then? There are some who will say they wouldn't respect the rules of war, anyway. If they are not sure they are going to win, as the Germans weren't in World War II, they might treat our prisoners according to certain standards if we insist upon those standards.

Well, someone tell John McCain that the enemy we face in this war, today, cares not whether it is subjected to accountability at any future war crimes trials. They will do what they feel will most terrify and demoralize their enemy, that is, our troops: Iraqi police: Body found in U.S. uniform

Iraqi police found the body of a man who was wearing what appeared to be a U.S. military uniform and had a tattoo on his left hand floating in the Euphrates River south of Baghdad on Wednesday morning. One Iraqi official said the body was that of an American soldier.

The man had been shot in the head and chest, Babil police Capt. Muthana Khalid said. He said Iraqi police turned the body over the U.S. forces.

Where was the Geneva Convention for this soldier? Which representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross spoke to him? What was the nature of the due process he was given, the opportunity he had to present a defense? By what authority did his captors impose the death penalty on him?

Foregoing "inhumane" treatment -- intensive and aggressive interrogation -- will not earn our troops humane treatment by our enemy.

Nor will it earn us the respect of the rest of the world. Those who hate America hate us not for what we do but for who we are -- and they need no excuse to elevate the idiot pranks at Abu Ghraib to the level of torture. For them, generic soap and shampoo are sufficient evidence of US torture.

But if renouncing torture doesn't earn the US any benefit, does its use -- or at least the use of aggressive and intensive interrogation techniques -- obtain the intelligence we need from detainees?

Not according to John McCain, as he expressed in the South Carolina Republican debate (registration required) -- even as our armed forces in Iraq were engaged in a desperate hunt for three of our captured soldiers:

First question to you, Senator McCain. How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?

SEN. MCCAIN: If I knew for sure that they had that kind of information, I, as the president of the United States, would take that responsibility. That is a million-to-one scenario. But only I would take that responsibility.

The use of torture -- we could never gain as much we would gain from that torture as we lose in world opinion. We do not torture people.

When I was in Vietnam, one of the things that sustained us, as we went -- underwent torture ourselves, is the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we would not impose that kind of treatment on them.

It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are. And a fact: The more physical pain you inflict on someone, the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to know.

It's about us as a nation. We have procedures for interrogation in the Army Field Manual. Those, I think, would be adequate in 999,999 of cases, and I think that if we agree to torture people, we will do ourselves great harm in the world.

McCain is trapped in the paradigm he learned at great personal cost in the Hanoi Hilton. But the conditions of that time and place were very different from Gitmo today. The Viet Cong wanted McCain to denounce the United States as a propaganda tool; while torture might get a prisoner to make statements denouncing his country or cause, that doesn't prove that the prisoner has internalized that denunciation and truly turned. However, interrogators at Gitmo aren't seeking to convert detainees, but only to extract factual information about their organization, methods and operational plans. Even John McCain (according to his autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," broke under torture and revealed factual information:

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

The interrogation techniques used at Gitmo pale in comparison to McCain's treatment at the hands of the Viet Cong. Still, they worked wonders in extracting valuable information from detainees like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad:

Captured al-Qaeda planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has given U.S. interrogators the names and descriptions of about a dozen key al-Qaeda operatives believed to be plotting terrorist attacks on American and other Western interests, according to federal officials. Other high-level al-Qaeda detainees previously disclosed some of the names, but Mohammed, until recently al-Qaeda's chief operating officer and the brains behind the 9/11 attacks, has volunteered new ones. He has also added crucial details to the descriptions of other suspects and filled in important gaps in what U.S. intelligence knows about al-Qaeda's practices.

McCain's view is that the efficacy of our interrogation techniques is completely irrelevant to our conduct of the current war against our current enemy, and that only the reputation of the United States in the world's eyes matters. That way lies the destruction of our civilization, and when the world is under the rule of the Caliphate that al-Qaeda seeks, the values McCain holds so dear will be consigned to the dustbin of history.