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In an extraordinary declaration of the brutality of American foreign
policy, the Bush administration denounced a Senate vote to bar the use of torture
against prisoners held by the US military. Responding to the passage of an amendment
to a Pentagon spending bill—approved by an overwhelming 90-9 vote Wednesday,
the White House said the proposal would “restrict the president’s
authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists
to justice.”
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.”
The McCain amendment originates in an effort by senators with close ties to
the Pentagon brass—McCain, in addition to being a celebrated POW, is the
son of an admiral—to get the military off the hook for the abuses at Abu
Ghraib and Guantánamo. In the course of the final debate, McCain cited
complaints by top military officers over conflicting signals from the White
House about what was permissible in the treatment of prisoners. “Confusion
about the rules results in abuses in the field,” he said.
This was a veiled reference to the infamous memos authored by the Bush Justice
Department and the White House Legal Counsel’s office—then headed
by the current attorney general Alberto Gonzales—that claimed presidential
authority to ignore the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention
Against Torture, based on Bush’s constitutional powers as commander-in-chief.
Senators supporting the amendment cited the colossal impact of the Abu Ghraib
revelations on world public opinion. Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
said, “The best thing we can do is give the guidance [the troops] need
to make sure we can win the war on terror and never lose the moral high ground.”
One factor in the top-heavy Senate vote was the recent testimony by a former
Army captain, Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne Division, about systematic beating
and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in early 2004, near Fallujah, a center of
resistance to the US occupation. Fishback and two former sergeants in his unit
have come forward, confirming that Abu Ghraib was not an exception, but rather
typical of the treatment meted out to hundreds and thousands of prisoners across
the country.
Also contributing is the steady stream of revelations about torture at the
Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Last month the US press carried reports on
widespread hunger strikes among the prisoners at Guantánamo, with as
many as 200 prisoners refusing food for as long as 45 days. At least 18 prisoners
were hospitalized and several force-fed. The prisoners were protesting the conditions
under which they are held, particularly the savage beatings by a notorious squad
of military thugs known as IRF. They have also demanded the right to challenge
their incarceration before an independent panel, as provided for under the Geneva
Conventions, rather than appearing before the rigged military tribunals set
up by the Bush administration.