How low have we fallen as a country when we're debating in Washington over how far to let our military and CIA go before we have to call it torture? Clearly, the right -- and the White House legal staff -- are now getting nearly all of their policy ideas from watching "24."
Here's the latest, catching up from yesterday:
The Senate Armed Services Committee led by three Republican members with military backgrounds (John McCain, who reportedly will "risk the presidency" to stop torture and secret CIA prisons going forward on his watch, Lindsay Graham, a former JAG officer, and John Warner, the Virginia elder statesman,) voted 15 to 9 to reject the president's plan to reinterpret parts of the Geneva Conventions to allow water boarding and other "creative," Jack Baueresque interrogation techniques at the U.S. secret CIA prisons, which were exposed this year by the New York Times, and which the Supreme Court, in the Hamdan case, ruled outside the president's constitutional authority to create. The military guys led a rejectionist wing that said "no" to the Bush administration's vision of secret trials without evidence presented to the defendants, water boarding and the like, and the disappearing of terror suspects into secret CIA prisons.
The pot got even hotter yesterday, as press reports revealed that none other than newly balsy former Joint Chiefs chair and ex-Secretary of State Collin Powell sent a letter to McCain (reprinted here), urging that the Geneva Conventions not be put aside by the Bushies. Here's the report from AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of the election season.
Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, normally a Bush supporter, pushed the measure through his Armed Services Committee by a 15-9 vote, with Warner and three other GOP lawmakers joining Democrats. The vote set the stage for a showdown on the Senate floor as early as next week.
In an embarrassment to the White House, Colin Powell - Bush's first secretary of state - announced his opposition to his old boss' plan, saying it would hurt the country. Powell's successor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, jumped to the president's defense in a letter of her own.
All this played out after Bush started his day by journeying to the Capitol to try nailing down support for his own version of the legislation - and by issuing a threat to the maverick Republicans.
"I will resist any bill that does not enable this program to go forward with legal clarity," Bush said at the White House.
The president's measure would go further than the Senate package in allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials, using coerced testimony and protecting CIA and other U.S. interrogators against prosecution for using methods that may violate the Geneva Conventions.
"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell, a retired general who is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his letter.
Powell said Bush's bill, by redefining the kind of treatment the Geneva Conventions allow, "would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
And when someone defies the president and his administration on matters of military and national security policy (he and his cabinet having soooo much combat experience between them ... ahem ...) you know what that means: Now, comes more controversy. This time it's over whether the White House put pressure on top military lawyers to accept their torture plan, even though a preponderance of evidence suggests most military experts believe that allowing the CIA or military to torture terror suspects puts American troops' lives in danger oversease, not to mention the fact that it isn't the most effective way to get information... Here's TPM Muckaraker:
More details emerge about the allegations that the White House pressured top military lawyers to drop their opposition to its favored torture legislation.
It's believed that William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon counsel who wrote the department's infamous 2002 policies endorsing physical and mental duress during interrogation of terror detainees, was the man who applied pressure to top JAGs of the four branches to sign away their disagreements in letters to key senators.
"Jim Haynes, who's the counsel at the Pentagon, convened this meeting and got these guys to write this letter and something they told people they didn't agree with," an unidentified reporter told White House spokesman Tony Snow in this afternoon's briefing.
"It's not the case," Snow replied. "They were asked to write a letter that reflected their views and they edited and signed the letter."
According to one Hill source, the allegation that Haynes pressured the JAGs came up in the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting today, with at least one senator suggesting a hearing devoted to the incident.
According to the muckrakers and the WaPo, John Warner is seeking hearings.
Blogger Willow's headline makes the salient point, and makes it well.
The "Independent Conservative" (another word for Bushbot trying to appear independent), says Collin Powell isn't just confused, the 30-plus year military veteran "isn't equipped to fight the war on terror" ... and AWOL Dubya and five-deferment Cheney, of course, are.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
