Annie
Diamond Member
- Nov 22, 2003
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It's time to use the veto Mr. Bush...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007477
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007477
'A Vietnam Moment'
The McCain Amendment would hamstring U.S. interrogators.
Sunday, October 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Bad things happen when a U.S. President has to fight a war while he's down in the polls--just ask the "South" Vietnamese who recall Watergate. And take a look at the current Washington debate over prisoner interrogation, where President Bush has been threatening to veto a spending bill because of a Senate-passed amendment that would hamstring the military and CIA.
Sponsored by John McCain, the measure sounds innocuous. It would designate the Army Field Manual as the last word on Pentagon interrogations and reaffirm existing safeguards against "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment. But the amendment is based on a false premise that prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib had something to do with "confusion" about permitted interrogation techniques. Or as Mr. McCain melodramatically put it on the Senate floor: "We threw out the rules that our soldiers had trained on. . . . And then when things went wrong, we blamed them."
The proposition that the Pentagon threw out any rules is simply false. Regarding Abu Ghraib, no fewer than nine courts-martial were confident enough of the rules to hand out sentences of up to 10 years to soldiers who violated those rules. The same courts martial proved that the abuses had nothing to do with interrogations. As former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who headed last year's independent panel on detention operations put it, Abu Ghraib was the result of sick and sadistic behavior on the "night shift."
If Mr. McCain has any point here, it's that before 9/11 the U.S. had developed little guidance for interrogating prisoners whom the Geneva Conventions designate as "unlawful combatants"--i.e., terrorists, and guerrillas who fight out of uniform. But since 9/11 the Bush Administration has developed such guidance, and the allowable techniques are both specific and legally vetted. Abuses have occurred, and dozens have been punished. Overall, rates of reported detainee abuse by U.S. soldiers today are historically low compared with other conflicts, such as World War II.
The danger is that the McCain Amendment would only solidify what's already been a military overreaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal. In Iraq, that overreaction has meant that terror suspects cannot be aggressively interrogated at all. They cannot be held for more than several weeks after capture without charge. The insurgents know this, and thus know that they have little to fear if they fall into U.S. hands.
Much has been made of the support of Colin Powell and some other retired officers for the McCain Amendment. We've read Mr. Powell's open letter on the subject, and it is substance-free. It contains only an exhortation that Mr. McCain's gesture will somehow "help deal with the terrible public diplomacy crisis created by Abu Ghraib." In short, it's PR.
Far more impressive is the near-unanimous opposition to the McCain effort from commanders currently fighting the war on terror. They understand that the amendment will be interpreted as an unnecessary rebuke, and as a huge disincentive to push detainees hard when seeking information on "ticking bombs."
Or as Senator Pat Roberts explained his opposition in the Washington Post: "I know as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that the information we get from interrogating terrorists is some of the most valuable information we get. It saves lives. . . . Passing a law that effectively telegraphs to the entire terrorist world what they can expect if they are caught is not only counterproductive, but could be downright dangerous."
One old Washington hand--who served in the Nixon Cabinet--tells us that the Senate vote on the McCain Amendment was "a Vietnam moment." He fears that the lopsided 90-9 tally will be read by our enemies as a sign of flagging American willingness to act firmly in our own self-defense.
Unfortunately, the White House has contributed to this signal by blinking on its veto threat. Vice President Dick Cheney's office has proposed a compromise that would exempt the CIA from the McCain Amendment. We understand the impulse to preserve at least some flexibility for the Agency interrogators who question the worst of al Qaeda--such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned 9/11.
But this Bush compromise isn't tenable. If U.S. interrogation practices are morally defensible, then they should be justified for all departments under executive branch supervision. And if the White House truly believes the McCain Amendment will damage American ability to obtain actionable intelligence from the enemy, then it ought to say so loudly and clearly and force Congress to take responsibility for its wartime micromanagement. Mr. McCain will then be accountable for the inevitable loss of intelligence-gathering capacity.[/B]