Senate Panel Defies
Bush on Detainee Bill
By DAVID STOUT,
NYTimes on the Web, September 14, 2006
WASHINGTON, — President Bush
went to Capitol Hill today to rally Republican support for his anti-terrorism
policies, but a Senate committee dealt him a serious setback after a former
member of his cabinet broke with him on a crucial issue.
Hours after Mr. Bush huddled with House Republicans, he suffered a defeat on the
other side of the Capitol, as the Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed
legislation that would give suspected terrorists more legal protections than the
president desires.
Four of the panel’s 13 Republicans joined all 11 Democrats in rejecting Mr.
Bush’s proposal to keep defendants from seeing classified evidence against them.
The vote came a day after the House Armed Services Committee adopted a measure
that more closely parallels what the president wants.
Mr. Bush said after conferring with Republican House members that he had
“reminded them that the most important job of government is to protect the
homeland.” As part of his plan, the president wants Congress to enact
legislation that would authorize tougher interrogations of suspected terrorists.
And that is what Congress must not do, said Colin L. Powell, the former
secretary of state. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of
our fight against terrorism,” Mr. Powell said in a letter to Senator John McCain
of Arizona, one of the Republicans who differ with Mr. Bush’s policies.
Mr. McCain was one of the four Armed Services Committee Republicans who voted
against Mr. Bush’s proposals. The others were Senators John W. Warner of
Virginia, the chairman, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina and Susan E. Collins
of Maine. The measure that the panel endorsed and sent to the Senate floor
would let suspects see evidence against them and would bar statements obtained
through torture or coercion.
Mr. Powell’s repudiation of the White House’s anti-terrorism approach was both
stark and highly unusual for a former cabinet member. In 1980, Cyrus R.
Vance resigned as President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state to protest the
failed mission to rescue American embassy personnel held hostage in Iran.
President Bush has contended that a section of the Geneva Conventions that
applies to the humane treatment of prisoners is too vague, and that Congress
should pass a measure redefining the extent of the United States’ compliance
with that section, known as Common Article 3.
As part of its push for the legislation, the White House released letters sent
to the Senate and House armed services committees by high-ranking military
lawyers who said that clarifying the obligations of the United States under
Common Article 3 “would be helpful to our fighting men and women at war on
behalf of our country.”
Back at the White House after his visit to the Capitol, but before the Senate
Armed Services Committee vote, Mr. Bush said he was seeking “legal clarity,” so
that Americans interrogating terrorist suspects would not be vulnerable to
charges of mistreatment.
“It is very important for the American people to understand that in order to
protect this country, we must be able to interrogate people who have information
about future attacks,” Mr. Bush said. “And that idea was approved
yesterday by a House committee in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion.”
The president was referring to the House Armed Services Committee’s endorsement
on Wednesday of a bill in line with what the White House desires regarding
electronic eavesdropping. The Senate Armed Services Committee also sent
such legislation to the Senate floor, but with competing measures, thereby
guaranteeing a vigorous debate.
Mr. Powell, a former four-star Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and had a leadership role in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, said in his
letter to Mr. McCain that redefining Common Article 3 would only deepen
worldwide doubts about America’s moral stature.
“Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk,” Mr. Powell said in his
letter to Mr. McCain. Critics of the Bush administration approach have
argued that, if the United States is seen to be mistreating captives, Americans
who are taken prisoner could be subjected to cruelty.
Mr. Powell resigned as secretary of state in November 2004 after it had become
widely known that he had had deep misgivings about the Bush administration’s war
to topple Saddam Hussein and was tired of repeatedly clashing with Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the issue.
In recent months, Mr. Powell has been advising Mr. McCain in connection with the
senator’s possible presidential candidacy in 2008, according to McCain aides.
In 2002, despite his misgivings about the coming war, Mr. Powell argued the Bush
administration’s case before the United Nations, asserting that there was strong
evidence that the Baghdad regime had deadly unconventional weapons. When
those weapons failed to materialize after Mr. Hussein was deposed, Mr. Powell
was said to be hurt and angry.
Mr. Powell’s letter to Mr. McCain was the latest development in a struggle over
Mr. Bush’s approach to fighting terrorism, a struggle that also involves how
much power government should have to monitor communications, and under what
circumstances surveillance can be done without warrants.
Democrats who oppose Mr. Bush’s policies have been strengthened of late by
Republican dissenters. Senators McCain, Warner and Graham held a tense
half-hour meeting with Vice President Cheney in July 2005 in which Mr. Cheney
scolded them for proposing legislation that Mr. Cheney said would weaken
President Bush’s power to protect Americans. The legislation, sponsored by
Mr. McCain, bars cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners in American custody.
“The three of us were firmly of one view, he of another,’’ Mr. Warner said of
the meeting.
The Senate and House eventually approved Mr. McCain’s measure by overwhelming
margins.
Today, just before the armed forces panel met, Mr. Graham said, “We are not
going to win the war by killing every terrorist with a bomb or bullet,”
according to Bloomberg News. “You win the war by persuading those people
in the Mideast to reject terrorism.” Mr. Graham is an authority on
military law.
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