A matter of conscience
Posted: Friday, September 15, 2006 4:11 PM by firstread
From NBC's Chip Reid
Sen. John McCain was rushing to catch a plane Friday afternoon, but he stopped in a Senate hallway long enough to give me his response to the President's press conference on interrogation of detainees. McCain has been one of the leaders of the "revolt" against the president's interrogation policy.
He clearly wasn't persuaded by anything the President said. "This is a matter of conscience," he said. And anyone who's followed McCain over the years knows that when he says something is a matter of conscience, that means he's not in a compromising mood.
"They want to amend the Geneva Conventions," he said, sounding exasperated. "The question here is whether the United States will challenge this long-standing treaty, and encourage other nations to do the same." He gave this example: Imagine that a member of the U.S. Special Forces is captured while snooping around a suspected Iranian nuclear research site. If nations have the right to re-interpret the Geneva Conventions as they please, he said, then Iran could interpret Article 3 to allow pulling out two fingernails during interrogation, but not three.
Perhaps not a likely scenario, but the point he says is that we can't just focus on the battle with al Qaeda. The U.S. will, in all likelihood, find itself be in a conventional war again someday. And U.S. troops will be taken prisoner. He says he's fighting this battle now so U.S. troops will be protected by the Geneva Conventions then.
McCain says he is not trying to stop the CIA interrogation program, that he favors amending the War Crimes Act to make sure that interrogators are protected from civil suits and criminal charges. Sounding a bit angry, or at least deeply frustrated, he told me it's "unfair of the them (the Administration) to say that under my plan we'd have to shut down the CIA interrogation program."
At times he sounded like reluctant warrior, forced into battle by conscience and principle. "I don't want a fight with the President. I don't seek a fight with the President. I want us to work it out", he said. No, he hasn't spoken directly to the President, but he has been in touch with others in the White House. And while he says he'd like to find a compromise, he said at this point "it's hard to figure a way" to get there, at least on the Geneva Convention issue.
Just about every article on McCain and this issue reminds readers that he was brutally tortured during his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, the suggestion being that it's a reason, or perhaps the reason, he's in this fight. But when I asked him if his personal experience with torture contributed to his strong feelings on this issue, he replied: "No. No more than Colin Powell or Gen. Vessey (another former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who supports McCain in this effort), or anyone else who has been to war and commanded troops."
As he walked away (his staff hurrying him along, nervous he might miss his plane) I asked if he's worried about this hurting him on the Presidential campaign trail. He simply shook his head and kept walking.
