Get ready for Bush's 3rd term!

McCain made himself famous for his anti-torture amendment... then quietly made a deal with the White House that would allow torture to continue. Follow along as John McCain - a war hero who was himself tortured - flip flops on torture again and again and again!

Flip Flop #1
December 9, 2005: McCain opposed torture

This year, he proposed an amendment to a defense bill that would ban cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.

"We should do it ... because we're American and because we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment no matter how evil or terrible they may be," McCain said on the Senate floor last month.

Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied against McCain's measure, arguing that CIA agents should be exempt from such a ban.

The Senate passed McCain's amendment 90 to 9. The House resisted. Republican leaders claimed the measure was legally unnecessary.

December 15, 2005: McCain still opposed torture

"We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. We have no grief for them, but what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are," McCain said. "I think that this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror."

But by February 8, 2008, McCain didn't really oppose torture.

To placate the White House, McCain eventually softened his prohibition by adding a legal defense for accused CIA and military interrogators that mimes the extreme exculpatory logic of the Justice Department's notorious August 2002 Bybee memo. Drafted to protect CIA interrogators after 9/11, this now-disavowed document argued that torture, as defined under U.S. law, required that the suffering inflicted "be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." In a section of McCain's amendment called "Protection of United States Government Personnel," the final legislation opened a little noticed but similarly cavernous legal loophole for future torturers. It allowed U.S. officials "engaging in specific operational practices that involve interrogation of aliens" to claim, if charged, that they "did not know that the practices [they used] were unlawful."

Flip Flop #2
October 26, 2007: McCain opposed torture

During his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Mukasey was asked if he believed waterboarding constituted a form of torture. The nominee hedged: "I don't know what is involved in the technique." He said that if waterboarding is torture, he would consider it unconstitutional, but refused to give Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) a yes or no answer.

Giuliani later defended Mukasey's formulation, suggesting that the liberal media was "misreporting" how waterboarding was done. McCain then laid into the former New York mayor today, saying, "They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."

It was convenient, because it made his rival for Republican presidential nominee, Giuliani, look bad. But... would it also make the Democrats look good? McCain didn't want to do that!

But will McCain join Senate Democrats in possibly holding up Mukasey's confirmation until he clears up his stance on waterboarding, as ThinkProgress proposed today? McCain's campaign suggests no.

"The Judiciary Committee process is ongoing and Sen. McCain believes that Judge Mukasey deserves an up-or-down vote based on his qualifications for the office of Attorney General," a McCain aide said in a Friday e-mail.

McCain's final decision about Mukasey? He didn't vote.

Flip Flop #3: The worst flip flop of all!
February 8, 2008: Suddenly, now that he's running for president, McCain supports torture!