It’s going to be a battle of wills – between decent conservatism and the lawless, government-knows-best policies of Cheney and Bush. Senator John McCain, who is an implacable foe of terrorism but also knows a thing or two about torture, wants to introduce legislation to regularize and clarify military detention policies. His proposed amendments to military appopriations bills would
set uniform standards for interrogating anyone detained by the Defense Department and would limit interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army field manual on interrogation, now being revised. Any changes to procedures would require the defense secretary to appear before Congress.
It would further require that all foreign nationals in the custody or effective control of the U.S. military must be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross — a provision specifically meant to block the holding of “ghost detainees” in Iraq, in Afghanistan or elsewhere…
Another McCain amendment prohibits the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in the custody of the U.S. government. This provision, modeled after wording in the U.N. Convention Against Torture — which the United States has already ratified — is meant to overturn an administration position that the convention does not apply to foreigners outside the United States.
Why would the Bush administration want to retain the option to use “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of detainees? They don’t support torture, do they? The amendment would simply bring order and law to what has been a free-wheeling and disastrously inept detention policy, made up by Bush officials as they went along. It beggars belief that, after Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Gitmo and the dozens of deaths in interrogation that the administration wouldn’t want some way out of its own impasse. But no: as so often, it sticks its heels in, and refuses to acknowledge an obvious and terrible mistake in the war. I look forward to the hard right describing McCain as a leftist or unpatriotic because he wants to restor America’s reputation as a country that acts ferociously but always humanely in its own defense.
The Dish 