It is not often I praise Republicans but today I will praise the efforts of Senator John McCain for attaching an amendment to a military spending bill that would:
Prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held
Full story
The vote itself on the bill was also impressive, 90-9.
Predictably a few Bush dead-enders (like Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama) called the legislation unnecessary because "We do not have ... systematic abuse of prisoners going on by our United States military"
The logical response to such a statement is to say that if a thing is unnecessary then there is no good reason to oppose it, particularly when doing so would curtail resources from our troops.
It is high time to end the reputation-eroding, troop endangering, alliance-deteriorating, practice of prisoner (or detainee) abuse. Few things have brought as much disgrace to America as stooping to the type of moral cowardice that leads to torturing a charge.
Our troops do not escape harm when they engage in such misdeeds. The message from the top needs to be that Freedom is something to aspire to, not empty rhetoric.
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