OMEN
09-16-2006, 08:50 AM
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Demonstrators in the UK protest against Guantanamo Bay.
With shining military credentials, the three Republican senators fighting US President George W Bush's policies to interrogate and try terrorism suspects give one key reason for their rebellion: the American soldier.
Repeatedly Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham say US military and intelligence personnel in future wars will suffer for abuses committed now by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism.
Implied in their statements is a fear that the administration's civilian lawyers and a president who never saw combat are putting US service personnel at risk of torture, summary executions and other atrocities by chipping away at Geneva Conventions' standards that have protected them since 1949.
The fight over Bush's treatment of terrorism suspects assumed even more of a military-versus-civilian tone when Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as Bush's first secretary of state, backed the senators.
In a stinging rebuke of the president he had served, Powell said in a letter, "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."
McCain, who was shot down as a Navy pilot and tortured during five years of captivity in Vietnam, speaks with a well-respected authority on the treatment of military prisoners.
"This is about the lives of American men and women who are serving our country," McCain of Arizona said on CNN after the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday passed a rival bill to Bush's plan. with Warner and Graham.
Unlike Bush's bill, the bill crafted by McCain, Warner and Graham would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them and would set tight limits on use of testimony obtained by coercion.
Their bill also offers CIA interrogators some legal protections from charges of abuse, but rejects the administration's plan to more narrowly define the Geneva Conventions' standards for humane treatment of prisoners.
The three Republicans senators are creating a nightmare for Bush and Republican leaders trying to depict Democrats as soft on terrorism in their bid to keep control of Congress in Nov. 7 midterm elections.
McCain also may complicate his own presidential aspirations if he angers conservatives.
But the senators insist this issue supersedes politics.
"What is being billed as clarifying our treaty obligations will be seen as withdrawing from the treaty obligations. It will set a precedent which could come back to haunt us," Graham, of South Carolina, said on Friday.
Graham, a former Air Force prosecutor and judge advocate in the Air National Guard, warned lawmakers earlier this week: "This is not about your reelection. It is about those who take risks to defend America."
Warner, one of the few World War Two veterans left in the Senate and the Navy secretary during the Nixon administration, has generally been a loyal -- if sometimes reluctant -- soldier for Bush as Armed Services Committee chairman.
While Warner maintains a compromise with Bush is possible, he has held fast to "core principles" that the United States provide fair trials and not be seen as undermining the Geneva Conventions.
In the House of Representatives, the Armed Services Committee produced a bill that mirrors Bush's. The full House is expected to pass it next week.
But Indiana Republican Rep. Steve Buyer said when Bush met with Republican House members on Thursday he challenged the president to listen to objections from the military's top lawyers that his plan did not meet fair judicial standards.
"It's dumbfounding to me that the president would not listen to his legal commanders," Buyer told Reuters. Buyer served in the Gulf War as a lieutenant colonel in the Army.
Reuters
Demonstrators in the UK protest against Guantanamo Bay.
With shining military credentials, the three Republican senators fighting US President George W Bush's policies to interrogate and try terrorism suspects give one key reason for their rebellion: the American soldier.
Repeatedly Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham say US military and intelligence personnel in future wars will suffer for abuses committed now by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism.
Implied in their statements is a fear that the administration's civilian lawyers and a president who never saw combat are putting US service personnel at risk of torture, summary executions and other atrocities by chipping away at Geneva Conventions' standards that have protected them since 1949.
The fight over Bush's treatment of terrorism suspects assumed even more of a military-versus-civilian tone when Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as Bush's first secretary of state, backed the senators.
In a stinging rebuke of the president he had served, Powell said in a letter, "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."
McCain, who was shot down as a Navy pilot and tortured during five years of captivity in Vietnam, speaks with a well-respected authority on the treatment of military prisoners.
"This is about the lives of American men and women who are serving our country," McCain of Arizona said on CNN after the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday passed a rival bill to Bush's plan. with Warner and Graham.
Unlike Bush's bill, the bill crafted by McCain, Warner and Graham would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them and would set tight limits on use of testimony obtained by coercion.
Their bill also offers CIA interrogators some legal protections from charges of abuse, but rejects the administration's plan to more narrowly define the Geneva Conventions' standards for humane treatment of prisoners.
The three Republicans senators are creating a nightmare for Bush and Republican leaders trying to depict Democrats as soft on terrorism in their bid to keep control of Congress in Nov. 7 midterm elections.
McCain also may complicate his own presidential aspirations if he angers conservatives.
But the senators insist this issue supersedes politics.
"What is being billed as clarifying our treaty obligations will be seen as withdrawing from the treaty obligations. It will set a precedent which could come back to haunt us," Graham, of South Carolina, said on Friday.
Graham, a former Air Force prosecutor and judge advocate in the Air National Guard, warned lawmakers earlier this week: "This is not about your reelection. It is about those who take risks to defend America."
Warner, one of the few World War Two veterans left in the Senate and the Navy secretary during the Nixon administration, has generally been a loyal -- if sometimes reluctant -- soldier for Bush as Armed Services Committee chairman.
While Warner maintains a compromise with Bush is possible, he has held fast to "core principles" that the United States provide fair trials and not be seen as undermining the Geneva Conventions.
In the House of Representatives, the Armed Services Committee produced a bill that mirrors Bush's. The full House is expected to pass it next week.
But Indiana Republican Rep. Steve Buyer said when Bush met with Republican House members on Thursday he challenged the president to listen to objections from the military's top lawyers that his plan did not meet fair judicial standards.
"It's dumbfounding to me that the president would not listen to his legal commanders," Buyer told Reuters. Buyer served in the Gulf War as a lieutenant colonel in the Army.
Reuters