Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House and maverick Senate Republicans have begun a fresh round of talks over how to handle the nation's most dangerous terrorism suspects, resuscitating GOP hopes for approving a key piece of the president's anti-terror agenda before the November elections.

In a new offer, the White House has conceded changes to its previous proposal, while the Senate Republicans who challenged the administration's plan say they are once again hopeful a deal could be reached.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in New York for meetings at the United Nations, predicted Tuesday that President Bush and Congress would find language for interrogation and treatment of terror suspects that ''gives the professionals, the people who actually interrogate, clarity on what is legal and what is not.''

''I do believe that the president and the Congress can work together to get a law that allows us to get the information we need legally and within our treaty obligations to protect the American people and to protect people abroad,'' Rice said on NBC's ''Today'' show. ''Nobody wants us to give up the methods and the program that has produced information that stopped attacks on the U.S. and abroad.''

While no details have been divulged, the change in rhetoric was in stark contrast to last week when the two sides began counting votes and turned to the press to plead their case. And it came amid indications that Bush's plan was in increasing trouble in the both chambers of the GOP-run Congress.

''We share the president's goal of enacting legislation preserving an effective CIA program to make us safe, upholding Geneva Convention protections for our troops, and passing constitutional muster,'' said Sen. Lindsey Graham in a statement Monday.

Graham, R-S.C., helped lead the charge against the administration's bill, alongside Sens. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and John McCain, a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War.

The Senate Armed Services Committee last week passed the senators' proposal by a 15-9 vote, with mostly Democratic support. The president's measure would go further, allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials and allowing coerced testimony. Bush also favors a narrower interpretation of the Geneva Conventions that would make it harder to prosecute U.S. interrogators for using harsh techniques. ...

McCain's Stand On Detainees May Pose Risk For 2008 Bid
Opposition to Bush Could Alienate Republican Base

By Charles Babington and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; A01

Sen. John McCain's bid to position himself as the natural heir to President Bush as a wartime commander in chief and to court conservative leaders in advance of his likely 2008 presidential campaign has threatened to run aground in recent days, as the two men clash over how to detain and try terrorism suspects.

For months, McCain has been wooing Bush's donors, hiring his former advisers and standing by him in the Iraq debate. But the fragile rapprochement between two men who were once bitter rivals for the presidency is facing a sharp new test over McCain's rejection of Bush's pleas to let the administration interpret the Geneva Conventions as it sees fit.

The impasse, which has preoccupied Congress this month, is likely to be settled within a few days but could remain hanging when lawmakers adjourn in a few days. Either way, it is likely to carry a long echo -- especially if the senator from Arizona forces Bush to back down.

Substantively, the legislative battle will shape what limits the administration will face on its anti-terrorism policies in the final two years of Bush's term. Politically, McCain's willingness once again to confront Bush raises questions about how he will position himself toward the Republican Party's conservative base, which he has aggressively cultivated over the past year as he pursues the presidency.

In a reprise of criticism showered on McCain during his 2000 campaign, some prominent conservatives are branding him a disloyal Republican and an unreliable conservative because of his assertiveness on the detainee issue.

The senator's actions "are blocking our ability to gain from terrorist captives the vital information we need," said a front-page editorial Saturday in the Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., the largest newspaper in the state with the first presidential primary. Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh said Friday that opposition to Bush's approach "is going to go down as the event that will result in us getting hit again, and if we do, and if McCain, et al. , prevail, I can tell you where fingers are going to be pointed."

If McCain or his backers worry that such pointed criticism threatens his presidential hopes, they do not admit it, calling the issue a matter of principle on which the senator has had a long record. But his camp acknowledges being well aware of the potential political ramifications.

For now, those ramifications remain uncertain. McCain's maverick style has long been popular with GOP voters in New Hampshire, where he bested Bush in the 2000 primary, said Andy Smith, a pollster who directs the University of New Hampshire's Survey Center.

"I don't think this impacts him too much in New Hampshire," Smith said yesterday. Polls consistently show McCain well ahead of potential Republican rivals there, Smith said, and the Union Leader's once-feared editorial page "is nowhere near as strong as it used to be."

McCain's defiance of the administration could prove particularly troublesome in South Carolina, the early-primary state where Bush's hard-hitting attacks in 2000 killed McCain's momentum and put the Texas governor on the road to the White House. Yet McCain's most outspoken ally in the detainee dispute is the state's senior senator, freshman Republican Lindsey O. Graham, who spent years as a military lawyer.

In a telephone interview from South Carolina yesterday, Graham said: "What I hear is, people respect the commitment of the president to the [CIA interrogation] program, and they respect my commitment and Senator McCain's commitment to the troops."

Graham added: "Every editorial in the state has understood Senator McCain's and my concerns, and believe they are legitimate." The Geneva Conventions say wartime detainees must be "treated humanely." Bush says the United States complies so long as CIA interrogators abide by a 2005 law barring "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of captives. McCain and his allies say that the requirement is too narrow, and that they are concerned Bush's approach would invite other nations to interpret the conventions in lax ways that could lead to abusive treatment of captive U.S. troops.

Canadians Fault U.S. for Its Role in Torture Case
By IAN AUSTEN
OTTAWA, Sept. 18 — A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria.

“I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,” Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, head of the commission, said at a news conference.

The report’s findings could reverberate heavily through the leadership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which handled the initial intelligence on Mr. Arar that led security officials in both Canada and the United States to assume he was a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist.

The report’s criticisms and recommendations are aimed primarily at Canada’s own government and activities, rather than the United States government, which refused to cooperate in the inquiry.

But its conclusions about a case that had emerged as one of the most infamous examples of rendition — the transfer of terrorism suspects to other nations for interrogation — draw new attention to the Bush administration’s handling of detainees. And it comes as the White House and Congress are contesting legislation that would set standards for the treatment and interrogation of prisoners.

“The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar’s case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion,” Justice O’Connor wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made public. “They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar’s case in a less than forthcoming manner.”

A spokesman for the United States Justice Department, Charles Miller, and a White House spokesman traveling with President Bush in New York said officials had not seen the report and could not comment.