Bush Gets Owned by His Own Party

[Nickdfresh]

GOP split as Senate panel bucks Bush on terror tribunals
POSTED: 5:23 p.m. EDT, September 14, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday voted 15-9 to recommend a bill -- over the objections of the Bush administration -- that would authorize tribunals for terror suspects in a way that it says would protect suspects' rights.

The bill was backed by Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It differs from the administration's proposal in two major ways: It would permit terror suspects to view classified evidence against them and does not include a proposal that critics say reinterprets a Geneva Conventions rule that prohibits cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees.

In a decision earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration must meet Article III standards in its treatment of detainees.

Article III prohibits nations engaged in combat not of "an international character" from, among other things, "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."
White House: Critics 'confused'

The vote came after White House spokesman Tony Snow said opponents of its proposal on detainee treatment misunderstood the administration's intentions when it proposed to define how Article III applies to the interrogation of terrorist suspects.

The administration believes that the court's ruling prevents it from properly interrogating terrorist suspects because it opens military and CIA personal to prosecutions, so the White House asked Congress to define the the terms of Article III, Snow said.

"If you have people in the field trying to question terrorists, if you do not have clear legal definitions, they themselves will be subject to the whims and the differing interpretations given by foreign courts, foreign judges and foreign tribunals," Snow said. "And we don't think that's appropriate."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also sent a letter to Sen. John McCain saying that the administration's "proposed legislation would strengthen U.S. adherence to Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions because it would add meaningful definitions and clarification to vague terms in the treaties."
Powell breaks with administration

But critics, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell and top Republican senators, oppose reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions rule.

Powell expressed his opposition in a letter to McCain that was released Thursday.

Warner, Graham, and McCain, a former Vietnam POW -- along with Powell -- oppose any changes to the U.S. interpretation of Article III, arguing that it could adversely affect enemies' treatment of captured U.S. service members. (Watch why the GOP is split over tribunals -- 2:40")

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell, a retired Army four-star general, wrote in his letter to McCain, whose amendment last year opposed the use of torture. (Read Powell's letter)

"To redefine Common Article III would add to those doubts," Powell said. "Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."

McCain also has issued a letter from retired Army Gen. John Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Reagan administration, opposing the administration bill.

Vessey told McCain the measure "would undermine the moral basis which has generally guided our conduct in war throughout our history."

Military lawyers also have raised concerns about the administration bill's restrictions on due-process rights for defendants. Prosecutors would be able to present evidence to the tribunal that would be kept secret from the defense and could use hearsay and coerced confessions against defendants. Human rights groups have objected to those provisions as well.

Powell's letter surfaced while Bush held a morning meeting with Republican lawmakers to lobby for his tribunal plan.
Bush: Changes are essential

After returning to the White House from Capitol Hill, Bush said the administration's proposed re-interpretation of Article III was essential if necessary intelligence was to be obtained from terrorist suspects.

"It is very important for the American people to understand that in order to protect this country, we must be able to interrogate people who have information about future attacks," Bush said. "I will resist any bill that does not enable this program to go forward with legal clarity.

"If there's not clarity, if there's ambiguity, if there's any doubt in our professionals' mind if they can conduct their operation in a legal way, with support of the Congress, the program won't go forward and the American people will be in danger," Bush said.

Vice President Dick Cheney and White House adviser Karl Rove joined Bush in his meeting with Republican lawmakers, The Associated Press reported.

Passage of the legislation is viewed as critical to the GOP's strategy to present itself as the party of national security going into the midterm elections less than two months away.
Republican showdown looming

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, has threatened to ignore the Armed Services Committee and bring the administration's plan directly to the Senate floor, which could lead to an election-year showdown within Republican ranks.

The House Armed Services Committee passed legislation that authorizes terrorist tribunals that closely adheres to the Bush administration proposal on Wednesday.

CNN's Ted Barrett and Andrea Koppel contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

[LoungeMachine]

Re: Bush Gets Owned by His Own Party

Originally posted by Nickdfresh



Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, has threatened to ignore the Armed Services Committee and bring the administration's plan directly to the Senate floor, which could lead to an election-year showdown within Republican ranks.

LMMFAO



Repukes eating their own.

[Nickdfresh]

The shit's hitting the fan today. Bush, despite the fact that he is tremendously unpopular, and a severe liability at this point, is attempting to strong-arm his own party. And they're saying "suck it cunt!"

[Nickdfresh]

"In his letter, Powell says 'The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of out fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore it would put our own troops at risk.'"

From: http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...powell_op.html

Powell's Letter.pdf

[Steve Savicki]

When you play with fire, you're bound to be burned.

[Nickdfresh]

How are those Republican "gains" going?

[FORD]

Re: Re: Bush Gets Owned by His Own Party

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
LMMFAO



Repukes eating their own.

Hey, Catkiller's out the door in 6 weeks. He can afford to show a little bit of spine, since he's at no risk himself, and at this point can only make his fellow Repukes look better by standing up to Chimpy once in a while.

If the rest of the Republican congress was retiring, we might have Chimpeachment hearings in progress already.

[ODShowtime]

It is so relieving to see the Legislative Branch grow a sack. Right before the elections is perfect timing!

[Nickdfresh]

How 3 G.O.P. Veterans Stalled Bush Detainee Bill

September 17, 2006

By CARL HULSE, KATE ZERNIKE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

This article is by Carl Hulse, Kate Zernike and Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham cornered their partner, Senator John W. Warner, on the Senate floor late Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Warner, the courtly Virginian who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had been trying for weeks to quietly work out the three Republicans’ differences with the Bush administration’s proposal to bring terrorism suspects to trial. But Senators McCain, of Arizona, and Graham, of South Carolina, who are on the committee with Mr. Warner, convinced him that the time for negotiation was over.

The three senators, all military veterans, marched off to an impromptu news conference to lay out their deep objections to the Bush legislation. Mr. Warner then personally broke the news to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, and the next day the Armed Services Committee voted to approve a firm legislative rebuke to the president’s plan to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions.

It was a stinging defeat for the White House, not least because the views of Mr. Warner, a former Navy secretary, carry particular weight. With a long history of ties to the military, Mr. Warner, 79, has a reputation as an accurate gauge to views that senior officers are reluctant to express in public. Notably, in breaking ranks with the White House, Mr. Warner was joined by Colin L. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a rare public breach with the administration he served as secretary of state.

As Mr. Warner left his Senate office on Friday afternoon, he carried a briefcase of material to prepare for a potential legislative showdown in the coming days. At stake, he said, was more than the fate of “these 20-odd individuals,” a reference to the high-level terrorism suspects awaiting possible trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“It’s how America’s going to be perceived in the world, how we’re going to continue the war against terror,” Mr. Warner said.

Then he showed off the motto on his necktie: “Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Ronald Reagan had a similar tie, Mr. Warner said, and had given him a copy.

Democrats and Republicans alike had assumed that Mr. Warner, a smooth negotiator not given to public confrontation, would relent to the administration, especially considering the importance Republicans had placed on passing the legislation as midterm elections approached.

The thinking was that Mr. McCain, who was tortured as a Vietnam prisoner of war, would not budge, nor would Mr. Graham, a military lawyer and zealous guardian of military standards. That left Mr. Warner as the best potential target for the White House. But as he considered the consequences of the proposal, the chairman decided to stick to his guns, saying he believed the nation’s reputation was at stake.

“He is a man of the Senate,” said Mr. Graham, arguing that Mr. Warner’s stance spoke volumes because it went against his nature to have so visible a conflict. “He is also a military man and has thought long and hard about this.”

Mr. Bush seems equally determined to win provisions he says are needed to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects. He and his allies are ratcheting up pressure on Senate Republicans who support alternate rules adopted this week by the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Warner, like his two colleagues, has a network of high-ranking current and retired military officers who provide regular guidance and support. While he has been consulting them privately, some are expected to weigh in publicly in the days ahead. One aide said on Saturday that the number of Senate Republicans behind the three senators was widening beyond the 8 or 10 they had anticipated, with lawmakers — heavily influenced by Mr. Powell’s stance — preparing to soon go public with their views.

In interviews, two senior Bush administration officials acknowledged that the White House had underestimated the depth of opposition Mr. Bush’s proposal would provoke. They also said they had focused mostly on gaining Mr. Graham’s support and mistakenly believed they had it, based on statements he made about the Geneva Conventions in Senate hearings. A Republican senator separately described the clash between the White House and Mr. Warner’s group as “a train wreck.”

The administration officials and the Republican senator were granted anonymity because they would not openly discuss negotiations between the White House and Congress.

Mr. Warner’s convictions about how military trials should proceed appear to stem largely from his personal experience, beginning with his Navy service in World War II. Hanging with the photographs on his office wall is a worn, small placard that his mother displayed on the door of their Washington home from 1944 to 1946: “There’s a Man from this family in the Navy.”

“I’m a man that’s been through a lot,” Mr. Warner said, recounting his days as secretary of the Navy in the early 1970’s when he was personally confronted with issues of military prisoners. “I mean, I’ve been through this before.”

Mr. Graham has similarly drawn on his legal and military background in challenging the White House. “The Geneva Convention means more to me than the average person,” he said. He said “some people” considered the conventions “a waste of time, but I know they have been helpful.”

Mr. Graham acknowledged that the political battle was bruising, but said he could not tolerate a change in the American interpretation of the conventions if it meant short-term benefits at long-term costs.

“President Bush is very sincere in wanting the tools he needs to fight the war on terror,” Mr. Graham said in an interview. “I don’t want the tools they are given to become clubs to be used against our people.”

In a letter sent Friday to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, Mr. Graham also took issue with a provision of the administration’s approach that would allow the use of secret evidence in trials of terrorism suspects.

"Where in American jurisprudence do you find support for the concept that a person accused can be tried and convicted on evidence which that person has no opportunity to see, confront or rebut?” Mr. Graham wrote. The bonds between Mr. Warner, Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham were forged in difficult times. Mr. Warner and Mr. McCain first met when Mr. Warner was the Navy secretary and Mr. McCain was returning to his Navy career after his captivity. Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham became close during the 2000 primaries in South Carolina, when Mr. McCain came under attack from Bush Republicans. They teamed up last year in forcing the White House to accept a ban on torture.

After the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s earlier plan for military tribunals in June, they joined with top military lawyers to form the chief bulwark against what they said were efforts to undermine military law and the 60-year-old protections of the Geneva Conventions.

“It’s not a question of defiance or intransigence, it’s the way we’ve worked,” Mr. Warner said. “We’ve continued to indicate a willingness to look at situations — is there a bridge that we can build between certain provisions? And our core principles are very rooted in the three of us.”

Mr. Graham added, “There are three branches of government, not one.”

Mr. Warner sought to serve as a counterbalance to the occasionally combative Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham during a turbulent week that fractured the Republican majority on its signature issue, national security. It saw Mr. Powell enlisting with the three Republicans against Mr. Bush, and left Mr. Graham chewing out General Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A director, in a closed meeting.

In the Senate, Mr. Warner is known for hearing out colleagues and trying to find consensus.

“John Warner is always very gracious,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who is also on the Armed Services Committee and sided with Senators Warner, McCain and Graham. “He is patient and he is thoughtful. And people sometimes mistake that for uncertainty about his position.”

Administration officials said they had focused on Mr. Warner as the key to overcoming Republican opposition in the Senate. When he raised a question with General Hayden about the State Department’s view on the matter, Mr. Warner received a phone call within hours from Ms. Rice.

Ms. Rice followed up with a letter to Mr. Warner, which administration officials distributed on Capitol Hill on Thursday to counter the letter from Mr. Powell, which had objected to the administration’s plan to redefine Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

But once it became clear that Mr. Warner was dug in, the administration began setting its sights on other senators, inviting them to the White House. On Friday afternoon, Mr. Frist’s office arranged a conference call between staff members for Senate Republicans and Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, to emphasize talking points for making the administration’s case on Capitol Hill.

As the fight swirled around him last week, Mr. Warner got a call from his grandson, Nicholas, a boarding school student who was an intern in his office this summer, asking what all the fuss on television was about.

“I took the time to try to explain it to him,” Mr. Warner said. “That’s one of the jobs we have to do, explain to the American people.” He added: “Neither McCain nor Graham nor I nor anybody wants to tie the hands of the intelligence community.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Nickdfresh]

Editorial
Bush Untethered
Published: September 17, 2006

Watching the president on Friday in the Rose Garden as he threatened to quit interrogating terrorists if Congress did not approve his detainee bill, we were struck by how often he acts as though there were not two sides to a debate. We have lost count of the number of times he has said Americans have to choose between protecting the nation precisely the way he wants, and not protecting it at all.

On Friday, President Bush posed a choice between ignoring the law on wiretaps, and simply not keeping tabs on terrorists. Then he said the United States could rewrite the Geneva Conventions, or just stop questioning terrorists. To some degree, he is following a script for the elections: terrify Americans into voting Republican. But behind that seems to be a deeply seated conviction that under his leadership, America is right and does not need the discipline of rules. He does not seem to understand that the rules are what makes this nation as good as it can be.

The debate over prisoners is not about whether some field agent can dunk Osama bin Laden’s head to learn the location of the ticking bomb, as one senator suggested last week. It is about whether the United States can confront terrorism without shredding our democratic heritage. This nation is built on the notion that the rules restrain our behavior, because we know we’re fallible. Just look at the hundreds of men in Guantánamo Bay, many guilty of nothing, facing unending detention because Mr. Bush did not want to follow the rules after 9/11.

Now Mr. Bush insists that in cleaning up his mess, Congress should exempt C.I.A. interrogators from the Geneva Conventions. “The bottom line is simple: If Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules — if they do not do that — the program’s not going forward,” Mr. Bush said. But clarity is not the issue. The Geneva Conventions are clear and provide ample room for interrogating terrorists. Similarly, in the debate over eavesdropping on terrorists’ conversations, Mr. Bush says that if he has to get a warrant, he can’t do it at all. Actually, he has ample authority to eavesdrop on terrorists, under the very law he is breaking, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that after being briefed on the wiretapping, she concluded that “this surveillance can be done, without sacrifice to our national security,” within the law. She has introduced a bill to affirm FISA’s control over all wiretapping. It would also give the authorities far more flexibility to listen first and get a warrant later when it’s really urgent. But the only bill Mr. Bush wants is a co-production of Vice President Dick Cheney and Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that gives the president more room to ignore FISA and chokes off any court challenges.

The best thing Congress could do for America right now is to drop this issue and let the courts decide the matter. Mr. Bush can’t claim urgency; it’s not as though he has stopped the wiretapping.

Legislation is needed on the prisoner issue, although not as urgently as Mr. Bush says. Three Republican senators, John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, have a bill that is far better than the White House version but it, too, has some huge flaws that will take time to fix. It will be hard in an election year, but if the Republicans stand firm, and Democrats insist on the needed changes, they might just require Mr. Bush to recognize that he is subject to the same restraints that applied to every other president of this nation of laws.

Link

[Seshmeister]

Some sense starting to break out?