It sounds like the Bush administration is now finding itself smack against an immovable force — Arizona Senator John McCain, who insists he will not be backing down on his demand for a ban on torture.
Not that he’s simply not talking with the administration. Quite the contrary. News reports indicate he’s discussing the situation with Bush team bigwigs, but he will not abandon his demand. For instance, the AP reports:
Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam, said Sunday he will refuse to yield on his demands that the White House agree with his proposed ban on the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists.
“I won’t,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked whether he would compromise with the Bush administration. He is insisting on his language that no person in U.S. custody should be subject to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The Arizona Republican said he had met several times with the president’s national security adviser,
Stephen Hadley, on the issue, and both McCain and Hadley said Sunday they were working toward an agreement.Hadley, on ABC’s “This Week,” repeated President Bush’s assertion that the United States does not torture and follows international conventions on the treatment of prisoners.
He added, “We’re trying to find a way … where we can strike the balance between being aggressive to protect the country against the terrorists, and, at the same time, comply with the law.”
“We’re working it. We’re not there yet,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
McCain, while saying he would not compromise on the torture language, said they were in discussions “about other aspects of this to try to get an agreement.” He did not elaborate.
In fact, elaboration is not needed because you can boil down what’s going on to this:
When the smoke clears, Vice President Dick Cheney is going to be the loser.
For instance, read Reuters:
The legislation was widely seen as a rebuke to the White House and an effort to repair the damage to the U.S. image caused by reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Vice President Dick Cheney led a White House bid to exempt the CIA from the ban, arguing that it would hamper the U.S. war on terrorism. Bush last month defended the effort to stop the Congress from imposing rules on the handling of terrorism suspects.
“What the president has said is that we do not torture,” Hadley said. “And he said that while we need to be aggressive in the war against terror, we also have to do it in a way that complies with U.S. law, with U.S. treaty obligations and with the Constitution.”
Many news reports have noted that Cheney is adamant on nixing a torture ban. Well, now — if these reports are to be believed — the White House is slowly, seemingly inexorably, inching towards accepting some kind of ban. Hopefully (from their standpoint) in a way that doesn’t make it look like they’re caving in to McCain.
And, make no mistake about it, the White House WANTS a compromise. The Cheney no-compromise stance has brought it nothing but condemnations (if you don’t count Rush Limbaugh) here and abroad at a time when Bush administration members are trying to reverse several months of combating the most difficult enemy of all: hideously bad news cycles. News stories quoting military officials saying torture not only is ineffective but could be counterproductive haven’t helped either.
You’re still not convinced? Then here’s the Los Angeles Times:
After threatening the first veto of the Bush presidency over efforts to outlaw the torture of military prisoners, the White House has backed away from a showdown and is now seeking a compromise with Congress.
… “They [administration officials] have assured me this will get worked out,” said a senior Senate Republican aide who, like others, did not want to be identified because the matter was still being negotiated in private. “It passed the Senate 90-9, and everyone agrees that if it came to a vote in the House, it would pass overwhelmingly. The trend lines are all in the Senate direction.”
If the White House capitulates or makes major concessions to McCain, it would be a significant retreat for an administration that argued vehemently that the measure would limit the president’s flexibility in fighting terrorism.
The strong sentiment in Congress points to continuing concern about the erosion of America’s moral authority following abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the denial of U.S. court trials to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other allegations of prisoner mistreatment.
“The administration lost the high ground on a critical issue that spoke to America’s moral standards in the war on terror,” said Marshall Wittmann, a former McCain aide who now is a fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. “It is inevitable that the administration is going to capitulate on this issue. It is only a matter of time.”
The furor over torture and U.S. operations has sparked a minifirestorm in the European press, and among European leaders. Part of the controversy stems from reports about the CIA allegedly operating prisoners in secret sites scattered around the globe.
At home, the Times notes, Bush has drawn a line in the sand — a line he may soon casually erase and redraw:
The White House and its allies argued that existing laws and regulations were adequate to prevent the torture of prisoners. They feared that adoption of the amendment would signal to prisoners that they had little to fear during interrogations. Pentagon officials warned that rigid rules could restrict U.S. latitude in the fight against terrorism.
The administration’s opposition was especially forceful. Although Bush has never exercised his veto power as president, he initially threatened to reject the defense bills if they contained the torture ban. Cheney made a personal plea to Senate Republicans in a closed-door meeting last month. He lobbied for Congress to at least exempt the CIA.
McCain called that exemption “totally unacceptable,” and the White House has apparently dropped the effort, a source familiar with the negotiations said.
The Times goes on to say that a compromise is expected. If you read various reports they suggest Cheney was the prime advocate for a hard line — a hard line that is now being dropped.
It makes you wonder: wouldn’t GWB save himself a lot of grief by holding off a bit when Cheney suggests a hard line? For someone who doesn’t like the word “retreat” it increasingly seems as if Cheney’s political-tin-eared advice sets him up to eventually have to do just that.
UPDATE: TMV cast a favorable eye on McCain but here’s a differing view.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.