Flip-Floppin' McCain-Style

The straight talk express broke down on the highway of political convenience today:

John McCain on torture on November 28, 2007 (CNN Youtube Debate):

[Waterboarding] is in violation of the Geneva Convention. It's in violation of existing law and... if we're going to get the high ground in this world and we're going to be the America that we have cherished and loved for more than 200 years, we're not going to torture people. We're not going to do what Pol Pot did. We're not going to do what's being done to Burmese monks as we speak. I suggest that you talk to retired military officers and active duty military officers like Colin Powell and others... how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me.... Life is not "24" and Jack Bauer. Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective. I just came back from visiting a prison in Iraq. The Army general there said that techniques under the Army Field Manual are working and working effectively, and he didn't think they need to do anything else. [T]his is what America is all about. This is a defining issue...."

John McCain on torture on February 13, 2008 (Atlantic Monthly):

Votes against a Senate bill that prohibits the CIA from waterboarding by requiring it to abide by the Army Field Manual's limits on interrogation techniques (the same manual that McCain is praising as sufficient for our needs above).

Update: For a good primer on what's at issue with this legislation and what McCain's arguments for voting against it are, see here.