Three Republican Senators -- John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner -- are working on legislation that would do little more than ban the use of torture by the American military. The Senators' goal is to set clear guidelines for the treatment of prisoners and make the military accountable for sticking to those guidelines. Pretty simple, right?
But the White House has said they would veto any such legislation as it "would restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice." Nevermind the fearmongering language. Nevermind the fact that hundreds of intelligence and law enforcement experts have repeatedly told us that torture doesn't work. Note that the White House believes that the mistreatment of prisoners is something that falls within "the president's authority."
Going even further than threatening a veto, according to the New York Times, Dick Cheney has been "leading a White House lobbying effort" to stop the legislation, meeting with these three Senators specifically to warn them from attempting to tie this legislation to the Pentagon's 2006 authorization bill. Here's their breakdown of the proposals the Bush administration finds so offensive:
A second provision would require that all detainees held by the military be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross. This measures seeks to prevent the holding of unregistered prisoners, or ghost detainees, in Iraq and Afghanistan and at other military sites.
Mr. McCain is also weighing a provision to prohibit the practice of seizing people and sending them abroad for interrogation. This practice has become the subject of mounting international criticism, as some of the countries involved are known to use torture. It has caused a deepening rift between the United States and some of its strongest allies.
Finally, Mr. McCain's amendment would bar cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees in American custody. This would effectively prohibit not only physical abuse but also practices like placing women's undergarments on the heads of Muslim male prisoners in an effort to humiliate them.
Mr. Graham, who has expressed some support for the idea of a wide-ranging independent commission to look into detainee abuses, is seeking to define the term "enemy combatant" for detention purposes, and to regulate the military tribunals to be held soon at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
So in a nutshell, the White House is fighting their own party in the Senate to reserve the right to torture prisoners. Insane, and yet thoroughly unsurprising.
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