Bush finally agrees with McCain on torture ban

In a move that is somewhat surprising, President Bush has decided to get on board with Sen. John McCain's proposed torture ban that he and his administration had threatened to veto. I think the President made a good move here, I really was puzzled over why the administration would publicly be against a proposal to prohibit torture when we already supposedly adhere to the Geneva Convention that prohibits it. Also, when our own government says that torture is okay when it decideds it is so, doesn't that make our own troops more likely to be tortured if they are captured. I realize many of those countries or groups that we have gone to war against already do torture our troops when they are captured, I think allowing our own government to use it AND publicly support it is a terrible idea.

I would think it would be smarter to publicly renounce torture and if you had to use it on an isolated basis it could probably be done so without telling the world. Don't get me wrong, not necessarily saying that we should do that, but you can always pass off one instance of torture as someone going too far, but when its your govt's policy, that is hard to dispute.

Furthermore, it has pretty much been proven that torture is often not the best way to extract accurate and useful information, especially physical torture like beating or shocking someone.

Another puzzling part of this story is how the administration seems to be on about 10 different pages on the issue, saying on one hand that we don't do it, but then another person says we should not have a ban on torture. Two weeks from Dick Cheney will probably go off in public about how we should use torture when necessary.

Here is the story on yahoo if you want to read it:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051216/ap_on_go_pr_wh/congress_detainees;_ylt=AquXy_dSoEiBj9WuP62oGF.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-