Torture: McCain was against it...before he was for it

In November, 2007 McCain said this:

I would hope that we would understand, my friends, that life is not 24 and Jack Bauer. Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective. And 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. My friends, this is what America is all about.

Bravo, Sen. McCain. You're fighting the good fight.

Flash forward:

[In February, 2008] the Senate brought the Intelligence Authorization Bill to the floor, which contained a provision ... establishing one interrogation standard across the government. The bill requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding.

McCain's principled response? He voted against the bill.

McCain elaborated on his vote:

"What we need is not to tie the CIA to the Army Field Manual, but rather to have a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program," McCain said, in stating his opposition to the bill.

WTF?

McCain then: “...life is not 24 and Jack Bauer. Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective...The Army Field Manual contains techniques [that] are working and working effectively...”

McCain now: “...[don't] tie the CIA to the Army Field Manual...”

McCain then: “All I can say is that [waterboarding] was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today...It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”

McCain now: “The [Army] field manual, a public document written for military use, is not always directly translatable to use by intelligence officers...”

McCain: he was against torture before he was for it.