Here’s the text of an amendment being proposed by Senator McCain to end the awful legacy of unclear guidelines, condoned abuse, orchestrated cruelty and intermittent torture of detainees by a small minority of U.S. forces in Iraq, with the full cognizance of many of their superiors:
MCCAIN AMENDMENT SA 1977
TEXT OF AMENDMENT
SA 1977. Mr. MCCAIN (for himself, Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. SMITH, and Ms. COLLINS) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 2863, making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
At the appropriate place, insert the following:
SEC. __. UNIFORM STANDARDS FOR THE INTERROGATION OF PERSONS UNDER THE DETENTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
(a) IN GENERAL.-No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
(b) APPLICABILITY.-Subsection (a) shall not apply to with respect to any person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense pursuant to a criminal law or immigration law of the United States.
(c) CONSTRUCTION.-Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the rights under the United States Constitution of any person in the custody or under the physical jurisdiction of the United States.
SEC. __. PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
(a) In General.-No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
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(b) Construction.-Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.
(c) Limitation on Supersedure.-The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.
(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.-In this section, the term “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.
Clear enough. Senator Warner is on board and is currently battling Senator Frist to get this debated and added to the military appropriations bill. The White House, determined to protect their own conduct of the war against any Congressional interference, is resisting hard. Money quote:
The stalemate began in July when Frist, R-Tenn., who shepherds President Bush’s agenda through the Senate by deciding what bills get a vote, abruptly stopped debate on the bill. That avoided a high-profile fight over amendments, supported by Warner and sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., restricting the Pentagon’s handling of detainees in the war on terror. The White House had threatened to veto the entire measure over the issue and sent Vice President Dick Cheney to Capitol Hill to press the administration’s opposition.
It would be an extremely rare veto for president Bush, designed for just one thing: to protect his prerogative to alllow the torture of detainees. Whatever your view of the past, doesn’t a clear definition of what is and is not permitted make sense? And isn’t a legislative act clearly forbidding abuse of prisoners a no-brainer? Surely this is something even Bush supporters can sign off on. It’s something you can email your senator about. Bloggers: join the campaign to end this abuse.
The Dish 