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Bush Digs in as His Party Revolts    [

    Bush Says GOP Rebels Are Putting Nation at Risk
    By Jim Rutenberg and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
    The New York Times

    Saturday 16 September 2006

    Washington - President Bush made an impassioned defense on Friday of his proposed rules for the interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, warning that the nation's ability to defend itself would be undermined if rebellious Republicans in the Senate did not come around to his position.

    Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.

    Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers - he referred to them repeatedly as "professionals" - would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action.

    "Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland," he said. "But the practical matter is if our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward."

    The administration has said the Central Intelligence Agency has no "high value" terrorism suspects in foreign detention centers, having transferred the last of them this month to military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But officials said they considered the program crucial to efforts to foil attacks.

    "This enemy has struck us, and they want to strike us again," Mr. Bush said, "and we'll give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country. It's a debate that, that really is going to define whether or not we can protect ourselves."

    It was also a debate Mr. Bush had hoped to have this week exclusively with Democrats as he and his party's leadership set out to draw unflattering distinctions between Republicans and Democrats on fighting terrorism for the fall elections.

    Instead, Mr. Bush spent Friday in a second day of heavy debate, casting some of the most respected voices on military matters in his own party as hindering the fight against terrorism. As of late Friday there seemed to be no break in the impasse, even as White House officials worked behind the scenes to build new support in the Senate for the legislation the president wants.

    Leading the efforts against him in the Senate are three key Republicans on the Armed Services Committee with their own military credentials: the chairman and a former secretary of the Navy, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia; Senator John McCain of Arizona, a prisoner of war in Vietnam; and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a military judge. And publicly taking their side is Mr. Bush's former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell.

    The dispute centers on whether to pass legislation reinterpreting a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 that bars "outrages upon personal dignity"; the Supreme Court ruled that the provision applies to terrorism suspects. Mr. Bush argued that the convention's language was too vague and is proposing legislation to clarify the provisions. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?" he said at one point.

    Mr. McCain and his allies on the committee say reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions would open the door to rogue governments to interpret them as they see fit.

    In a statement late Friday, Mr. McCain stuck to his position, saying that his proposed rules included legal protections for interrogators. "Weakening the Geneva protections is not only unnecessary, but would set an example to other countries, with less respect for basic human rights, that they could issue their own legislative reinterpretations," he said.

    Mr. Bush rejected the crux of Mr. McCain's argument when a reporter asked him how he would react if nations like Iran or North Korea "roughed up" American soldiers under the guise of their own interpretations of Common Article 3.

    "You can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country," Mr. Bush said, casting the question as steeped in moral relativism. "The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law."

    He also discounted an argument made in a letter from Mr. Powell that his plan would encourage the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

    Asked about that analysis, Mr. Bush said, "If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic."

    Mr. Bush was alternately combative and comedic during the hourlong session with reporters. At one point, in describing how he thought the economy and Republican tax policies would help his party in November, he said: "I've always felt the economy is a determinate issue, if not the determinate issue in campaigns. We've had a little history of that in our family, you might remember."

    It was an off-hand reference to his father's losing presidential re-election campaign in 1992, when he was damaged by economic woes and the breaking of his "read my lips" vow not to raise taxes.

    Mr. Bush said it was "urban myth" that his administration had lost focus on capturing Osama bin Laden. The president said he was frustrated by the United Nations at times, especially when it came to addressing genocide in Darfur.

    Asked about a Senate report concluding that there was no working relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in Iraq, Mr. Bush said forcefully, "I never said there was an operational relationship."

    The questioner had included a reference to Mr. Bush's Aug. 21 news conference at which he had said, "Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would - who had relations with Zarqawi," referring to the Qaeda mastermind in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

    Democrats for the most part on Friday were content to allow Republicans to fight among themselves on the terrorism question.

    "When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

    But Republicans boasted that their top issue, terrorism, was dominating the political news for yet another day and overtaking Democratic criticisms of the war in Iraq.

    Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting.

    Go to Original

    Bush Digs in as His Party Revolts
    By Suzanne Goldenberg
    The Age, Australia

    Sunday 17 September 2006

    US President George Bush has stared down a revolt by Senate Republicans, saying their resistance to tough terror laws sought by the White House would expose America to another al-Qaeda attack.

    He showed no sign of compromise, a day after four prominent Republican senators voted for a bill that the White House opposes on the treatment and trial of detainees.

    "Time is running out," Mr Bush told a news conference at the White House. "Congress needs to act wisely and promptly." He went on to warn that their refusal to endorse White House proposals to redefine compliance with sections of the Geneva Convention prohibiting torture would weaken America in its "war on terror".

    "I believe that it is vital that our folks on the front line have the tools that are necessary to protect the American people," Mr Bush said. "The reason they need those tools is because the enemy wants to attack us again."

    Senator John McCain, who spent five years as a prisoner in the Vietnam War, and the other Republican rebels argue that loosening the standard on the Geneva Convention would put US soldiers at greater risk of mistreatment if captured.

    Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, has added his prestige to their cause. In a letter to Mr McCain, Mr Powell said the White House proposals would create doubts about the "moral basis" of the war on terror.

    But Mr Bush showed little patience for that argument.

    "It is unacceptable to think that any kind of comparison (exists) between the behaviour of the United States of America and the Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve their objective," he said.

    He warned that the Senate draft would force the CIA to stop interrogating terror suspects at its secret prison network, the existence of which he acknowledged for the first time last week, and said the CIA had used "alternative interrogation procedures" against high-value al-Qaeda suspects to gather intelligence that had thwarted attacks.

    Mr Bush argues that the Geneva Convention is vague and that the CIA and other agencies need greater clarity to ensure they will not face future prosecution for war crimes.

    The rebellion in the Senate is a repudiation of the Administration's assertion, over the past five years, of the expanded powers of the presidency. It also causes a rift among Republicans and frustrates strategy to put the Democrats on the defensive in November's mid-term elections by campaigning as the party of strong leadership in the war on terror.

    The showdown came just as Mr Bush was beginning to see some gains in the polls after a series of speeches on the war on terror.

    The stage for this week's debate on treatment of detainees was set last June when the Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals established by the White House to try the Guantanamo detainees violated US law and a section of the Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners of war.

    Mr Bush reopened the issue of the detainees when he announced that 14 al-Qaeda suspects had been moved from CIA secret prisons to Guantanamo and would be put on trial. He then urged Congress to pass legislation that would allow those trials to go ahead.