Bush White House declares torture vital to US security policy

The statement indicated that Bush would veto the entire appropriation, providing $440 billion to fund military operations for the next fiscal year, rather than accept the restrictions on interrogation techniques spelled out in the Senate amendment.

The 90-9 vote came on an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican and former prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain, a fervent supporter of the war in Iraq, has opposed the use of torture in military facilities like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, because it damages US foreign policy interests and could become the pretext for subjecting captured American military personnel to the same techniques in retaliation.

McCain’s amendment had the backing of two dozen former generals and admirals, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and former Secretary of State and JCS chairman Colin Powell. Forty-six Republicans, 43 Democrats and one independent voted for the amendment, which was opposed by only nine Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist voted with McCain and against the White House position.

Frist delayed the introduction of the anti-torture language earlier this summer, maintaining that Congress should not put restrictions on the measures which the administration felt were necessary to fight the “war on terror.” But the events of the past three months, both in the increasingly bloody stalemate in Iraq and the feeble response of the federal government to the Gulf hurricane crisis, have weakened the Bush administration.

The amendment itself is extremely limited in its scope. It simply prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of those in the custody of the military and requires that questioning of prisoners detained by the military follow the existing U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. No such restrictions would apply to those held by US intelligence agencies, such as the prisoners in the CIA-run detention centers at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and at undisclosed locations elsewhere in the world. Those captives can still be tortured at will.

During the final debate on the amendment, McCain read out a letter from former secretary of state Powell endorsing the measure, which Powell said would address “the terrible public diplomacy crisis created by Abu Ghraib.” It was the first time since his departure from office in January that Powell has publicly opposed the foreign policy of the Bush administration—a measure of the impact of the Iraqi debacle on the US foreign policy and military establishment.

At a press briefing Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed that Bush would veto the entire appropriation bill rather than have his power to order torture restricted. McClellan made absurdly contradictory claims, declaring the amendment “unnecessary and duplicative” in view of current administration policy, which supposedly bans torture, and at the same time saying “it would limit the President’s ability as commander-in-chief to effectively carry out the war on terrorism.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/tort-o07.shtml