bush-mccain-hug-more.jpgJohn McCain makes his trip this week sound so nice: "I want to tell people living there that there must not be any forgotten parts of America." It's a pity that his own memory seems to be fading, however. Perhaps three more stops for his "Forgotten Places Tour" will help him remember what America stands for, and what it stands against.

Stop #1: Fort Hunt, just south of Alexandria VA, is the site of a successful WWII interrogation program that employed not torture but respect. The National Park Service runs the place now, and they are working on an oral history project of those days. Some of the former interrogators (now in their 90s) may be around to tell McCain what they think of Gitmo, the Military Commissions Act, and Abu Ghraib. They haven't forgotten what works, when it comes to interrogation methods:

"We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark.

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Sounds a lot different than the Gitmo translator's story of his service, doesn't it? Apparently the current crop of war planners have given up fighting a battle of wits along with their humanity.

Stop #2: the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis. Tshenuwani Simon Farisani, a Lutheran clergy acquaintance of mine from South Africa was a guest at CVT back in the late 1980s, after having been tortured in the prisons of the apartheid regime because of his preaching. The CVT probably knows more than just about anyone about the effects of torture on both the victim and the perpetrator, the problems with the "information" produced by torture, and how to try to bring about healing in its aftermath. They, too, are not pleased that America's leaders have forgotten our historic stance in opposition to torture. When Bush vetoed the bill that would have required the CIA and other government interrogators to follow the limits of the U.S. Army Field Manual, CVT Executive Director Douglas A Johnson said this:

Our profound disappointment in the President’s failure to stand by American values is rooted in our more than 20 years of service to torture survivors. In providing care to courageous men and women from 67 countries, we have learned that the methods reportedly used by the CIA result in long-lasting health effects, serious pain, and unimaginable fear. We also know from our clients that persons being tortured will tell their torturer anything to end their suffering. Our nation’s military leaders recognize this fact; they warn that interrogation methods which employ torture and cruelty do not yield reliable information. Indeed, rather than bolstering our security, these policies place our soldiers at risk of the same treatment and discourage cooperation from our allies—cooperation that is key to a strong national defense. By allowing these gaps in our policy to persist, we weaken our national security and diminish our moral standing.

Defeating terrorists requires not only strength of arms but strength of character. Throughout our history, when facing forces intent on destroying us, our national conscience guided us; the broader values that we protected helped to shape our nation. We will continue the fight to honor those ideals by closing the gaps in our interrogation policy. We will not give up on establishing one national standard that proudly reflects the universal truths for which America stands.

As Marty Lederman reminds us, John McCain voted to support Bush's position.

Stop #3: the National Archives and its Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. Here McCain can refresh his memory by taking a look at documents that define those "universal truths." From McCain's blind support of the Bush Administration's twisted logic of unchecked executive authority, it is apparent McCain has forgotten what is contained in them:

Contrast these noble documents with what Glenn Greenwald described exactly two years ago tomorrow about the actions of the Bush Administration -- actions that McCain has enabled, time and time again:

The excesses and extremist conduct in which our government now engages has become so commonplace as to be mind-numbing. We detain U.S. citizens and stick them in military prisons with no trial, charges or even access to lawyers. We use torture as an interrogation tool. We use secret, off-the-book Soviet-era gulags that are beyond the reach of the law. We send people to the most repugnant governments to be tortured. And the President has expressly embraced the theory that he has the power to break the law.

There certainly appears to be no limits on what Bush followers will endorse in the name of fighting The Enemies, domestic ones included, sometimes most prominently. And what is so significant about this is that the institutions which previously existed as a safeguard against arbitrary punishment and abuse of power -- things like due process guarantees, Congressional oversight, an adversarial media, whistleblowers -- have all been steadily eroded. The administration has seized the power to arrest people without charges, hold them in secret prisons, use torture to interrogate them, etc. That is all out in the open and prompts defenses of these practices from its followers.

Followers, that is, like John "Four More Years of Bush" McCain.