The Senate has basically given President George Bush what he wanted on the controversial detainee interrogation bill — a bill that in its final incarnation was a compromise with some holdout Republican Senators but basically gave him what he wanted.
For the Bush administration, it’s a key victory. For the GOP it’s a way to frame and define the Democrats. And to some critics in both parties it’s a bill that fundamentally changes the United States and gives more — some say nearly unlimited — power to the President in having some folks arrested. The New York Times:
The Senate approved legislation this evening governing the interrogation and trials of terror suspects, establishing far-reaching new rules in the definition of who may be held and how they should be treated.
The vote, 65-to-34, came after more than 10 hours of often impassioned debate touching on the Constitution, the horrors of Sept. 11 and the nation’s role in the world, but it was also underscored by a measure of politics as Congress prepares to break for the final month of campaigning before closely fought midterm elections.
The legislation sets up rules for the military commissions that will allow the government to prosecute high-level terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It strips detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court and broadly defines what kind of treatment of detainees is prosecutable as a war crime.
The bill was a compromise between the White House and three Republican senators who had pushed back against what they saw as President Bush’s attempt to rewrite the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions. But while the president had to relent on some of the key specifics, it allowed him to claim victory in achieving one of his main legislative priorities.
“As our troops risk their lives to fight terrorism, this bill will ensure they are prepared to defeat today’s enemies and address tomorrow’s threats,� Mr. Bush said in a statement shortly after the vote.
Since the House already passed a similar bill, Bush is expected to sign it into law this week…in a big ceremony that will be aimed at framing the election as well as changing the law.Notes The Independent’s Washington Correspondent:
The legislation also fulfils a vital political purpose. With party ranks reunited, the White House is again trying to manoeuvre Democrats in a corner, in which it can depict the latter’s opposition to anti-terror legislation as proof of weakness on national security. Republicans are counting on the issue to retain control of Congress in November.
After the House vote, Dennis Hastert, the Speaker, accused the 168 Congressmen who opposed it (all but eight of whem Democrats) of “voting in favour of more rights for terrorists”. If Democrats had their way, he said, they would “coddle” the very people who were trying to harm Americans around the world.
SUBTEXT is what we’ve noted here before: The White House and Republican leadership are essentially updating 1950s McCarthyism, suggesting that Democrats are for “terrorists rights” — not noting that the executive branch under George Bush has repeatedly expanded Presidential power and then sought to have it ratified by its loyal Republicans in Congress. Because the Congress is totally under Republican control authentic oversight and advise and consent has been lacking.
It’s a case more than ever for voters — including traditional conservatives who are descendants of Barry Goldwater — to opt for ending the experiment in total one party rule
But will they? This will fire up the base — with talk about Democrats being for terrorists rights and going easy on terrorists if they get into power.
Question: will this turn off independent voters? Will concerned independent voters, traditional conservatives, and moderate to center-left Democrats who don’t like being told their party wants to protect people who want to butcher Americans decide no matter what they will cast their votes in this election to ensure there is divided government and authentic advise and consent for the next two years? Or is the name of the game is getting out the base so in the end governance in the 21st century has become government by the base, of the base and for the base?
Democrats used the initial argument of Senator John McCain, the likely Republican presidential candidate in 2008, who led the earlier rebellion. The former Vietnam prisoner of war warned that the Bill could endanger US troops by encouraging an enemy to limit their rights if captured.
Mr Hastert’s “false and inflammatory rhetoric” was just another attempt “to mislead the American people and provoke fear”, said a spokeswoman for Nancy Pelosi, minority leader in the House. Democrats complain the Bill gives the Mr Bush too much latitude in deciding interrogation standards.
Another Times piece notes that the Democrats, although unable to vote with unanimity, were determined to stand up to GWB on a security vote this time around:
The Democratic vote in the Senate on Thursday against legislation governing the treatment of terrorism suspects showed that party leaders believe that President Bush’s power to wield national security as a political issue is seriously diminished.
Dmocratic assessment came from the party’s many presidential hopefuls in the Senate. All of them voted against the bill, apparently calculating that Mr. Bush’s handling of Iraq has undercut the traditional Republican strength on national security and will insulate them from what are certain to be strong attacks from Republicans not only this year but also in 2008.
Democratic opponents of the legislation said their political position was driven by a substantive determination that the bill, which creates rules for interrogating and trying terrorism suspects, is fundamentally flawed and a dangerous departure from founding American principles….
…Over all, 32 Democrats voted against the measure while 12, including some of those in the most difficult re-election fights, backed it. Among the latter was Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, whose perceived support for Mr. Bush has brought him political trouble at home.
It was a stark change from four years ago, when Mr. Bush cornered Democrats into another defining pre-election vote on security issues — that one to give the president the authority to launch an attack against Iraq. At the time, many Democrats felt they had little choice politically but to side with Mr. Bush, and a majority of Senate Democrats backed him.
Blogger Taylor Marsh sent us some comments made by Senator John Kerry at John Hopkins. Here are some of them:
Let me be clear about something—something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.
The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. But we have seen in Iraq the consequences of simply accepting the word of this Administration. No, we cannot just accept the word of this Administration that they will not engage in torture given that everything they’ve already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror.
The question then becomes: how political is this?
President George Bush gave the answer in no uncertain terms:.So much for using the word “bipartisan” ever again his speeches after this:
President Bush suggested Thursday that Democrats don’t have the stomach to fight the war on terror, battling back in the election-season clamor over administration intelligence showing terrorism spreading.
“Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing,” Bush said at a Republican fundraiser.
“The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run,” Bush told a convention-center audience of over 2,000 people. The event put $2.5 million in the campaign accounts of Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and the state GOP.
It’s “red meat” for the party’s base.
Some people love red meat. But it makes some other sick.
Weblog reaction has been predictable: many hard-core Bush supporters applaud it and decry the Democrats and many Democrats feel it represents the administration and Republicans shoving the United States into previously taboo legal — and moral — territory.
Those reactions are not unexpected, but perhaps the Bush administration — and the GOP — should be more concerned about another kind of reaction: the reaction from independent voters, GOPers and Democrats who supported the administration on the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Many (whose ranks include the traditional conservatives) are not pleased. Here are two examples from the blogosphere:
While I can hardly be as angry as the Democrats as I am at the Republicans about this bill, as it is the GOP who crafted, pushed, and, eventually, will pass this flawed bill, I can reserve a fair amount of disgust for the feckless cowards that is the modern Democratic party. If you really believe that “We are about to put the darkest blot on the conscience of the nation,� as Sen. Pat Leahy is quoted, then sitting by and allowing it to pass and not filibustering the bill makes you complicit inthe passage. If the bill is as bad as you say it is, and I think it is, get off your ass and do something about it.
Or at least have the decency to tell the netroots to find somebody worthwhile to send their money to, because you have proven you simply are unwilling or incapable of getting the job done.
Losers.
And Andrew Sullivan, who supported the war but has increasingly broken with the administration over it implementation of it and the use of torture, writes:
This is what conservatism has now become. Because of McCain’s capitulation and the Democrats’ cowardice, this bill will now pass. The use of torture as a campaign weapon will be brutal, and deployed first and foremost by this president…
The only response is for the public to send a message this fall. In congressional races, your decision should always take into account the quality of the individual candidates. But this November, the stakes are higher. If this Republican party maintains control of all branches of government, the danger to individual liberty is extremely grave. Put aside all your concerns about the Democratic leadership. What matters now is that this juggernaut against individual liberty and constitutional rights be stopped. The court has failed to stop it; the legislature has failed to stop it; only the voters can stop it now. If they don’t, they will at least have been warned.
You can read a good cross section of weblog reaction HERE.
UPDATE: Molly Ivans doesn’t mince words as she summarizes what kind of change has been done to American justice:
The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to� all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine� and left only “respond to.�
In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,� which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.
The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.� Quick, define “purposefully and materially.� One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.
The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.
As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.� But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain� and substituted “serious pain,� which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.�
This certainly sounds like a radical change that would have had conservatives 10 or even 7 years ago out in the streets. But the name of the game for many is follow The Leader even if you have to jettison values that were at the core of your being previously.
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.