White House, GOP Leaders Reach Deal on Detainee Legislation

Thursday , September 21, 2006

WASHINGTON — A deal on the rules for questioning and trying suspected terrorists protects Americans and classified information while maintaining U.S. values, Senate Republican leaders and Bush administration officials said Thursday.

After nearly a week of back-room negotiators, lawmakers announced that they had created the framework under which CIA interrogators and military lawyers can do their job in bringing terrorists to justice.

"I'm pleased that we have agreement which meets three tests of our conference," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

"Number one, it protects Americans by ensuring that our high-value CIA program will be preserved. Number two, it guarantees that classified sources and methods will not be disclosed to the terrorist detainees. And, third, it ensures that our military can begin to try terrorists in our custody," said Frist, R-Tenn.[/b]

This deal "gives the president the tools that he needs to fight the War on Terror, and bring these people to justice," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was among the few Republican senators who had held out against Bush administration provisions for interrogating detainees.

McCain said the deal is consistent with the Detainee Treatment Act and preserves the integrity of the Geneva Conventions.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another negotiator, said the deal allows for prosecution of terrorists without revealing the methods and techniques. It makes sure those methods for interrogation don't come back to haunt the United States.

"The good news about our deliberations is that we have a framework which will allow the CIA to go forward. We also addressed the issue of military commissions" that will maintain U.S. values while still providing for the prosecution of terrorists, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said. "The bill will provide rules for interrogators to detain, question and bring to justice terrorists. It is good news and a good day for the American people."

Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said the product of the compromise will now be brought to the floor, and then sent over to the House for debate. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he wanted to get the bill completed before lawmakers left Washington, D.C., next week to campaign ahead of the midterm election on Nov. 7. He said he will be taking the language to Democratic leaders very soon.

While details of the deal were still being held close to the vest, Frist said the focus of the agreement related to classified intelligence information, evidence obtained through coercion and some lesser provisions which are still being hammered out.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said his chamber's work "is not over yet. I think we're very close. We're concerned most strongly with the utilization of classified information."

Prior to the announcement by senators, Hunter said he got word that senators had a "conceptual agreement on what they think would work well, particularly with respect to Geneva Convention Article 3."

The Geneva Conventions prescribe international standards for the treatment of prisoners taken in a war. The White House and Senate holdouts had argued over making sure the language was clear that torture would be barred. In revising the War Crimes Act, the bill seeks to spell out "grave breaches" of Common Article 3.

One official said that under the agreement, the administration agreed to drop language that would have stated an existing ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was enough to meet Geneva Convention obligations. Convention standards are much broader and include a prohibition on "outrages" against "personal dignity."

In turn, this official said, negotiators agreed to clarify what acts constitute a war crime. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he had not been authorized to discuss the details.

The agreement did not extend to a related issue -- whether suspects and their lawyers would be permitted to see any classified evidence in the cases against them. Hunter said that is the biggest issue for House Republicans.

The House bill, which resembles more closely the administration's original proposal, allows classified evidence to bring about a conviction, even when that evidence is not disclosed to the alleged terrorists. The Senate bill had said that classified information shall not be disclosed, but then it doesn't provide for the classified evidence to be used if it's not disclosed.

"We have created what I think is the most robust national security privilege in American law to protect the prosecutor's file from falling into the hands of the defendant, the defense attorney, in a way that could compromise national security," Graham said of the compromise.

The South Carolina Republican added that he had been most concerned about protecting classified information. In the end, negotiators had concluded that if someone is sentenced to a long prison term or death, his attorneys must be allowed to see the classified evidence against them.

Hunter said those provisions need to be reviewed in the House.

"So we are very concerned, on the House side, about protecting classified evidence, not revealing it to the alleged terrorists, not revealing the names or the identity of the agents to the terrorists or allowing the terrorists to see those agents, but allowing their lawyers, if they have the appropriate security clearances ... to be able to cross-examine American agents or to review classified evidence," he said.

FOXNews.com's Sharon Kehnemui Liss and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

*haunt the current adminstration.

Yeah, that's a good thing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060928/ap_ ... rrorism_40

i bet this is one of sharon kehnemui liss' contributions. real object there, fox news.

Why is it that I don't associate the terms "CIA" and "justice"?

Good. What Lindsey Graham was proposing would have led to nothing more than a string of the kind of sideshow we saw Zacharias Mussoui put on. Graham and Specter are good, patriotic men but they are flat wrong.

We won't torture. We won't wrongfully imprison. We won't be held accountable. We are the Chosen People of God.

Well, I'm not going that far. But the legislation that is being passed is practical and necessary. The information that has been received from detainees using assertive interrogation techniques has twarted over a dozen potential terrorist attacks. If that's wrong then I have no clue what the Liberal idea of being right is.

I'm talking about the right to a timely trial. The right to file a grievance if you've been wrongfully imprisoned.

And we have no evidence that "assertive interrogation techniques" have prevented ANY attacks, and we have no idea how many resources have been wasted chasing false leads.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/09/ ... cover.html

9/28/2006
Democrats: The Rude Pundit's Got Your Cover For Filibustering the Torture/Detention Bill:

Democrats in the Senate are playing this debate over the Indefinite Detention and Torture-at-Will bill like a blackjack player staring at a fifteen while the dealer's holding a king. And that's not even remotely close to the truth of the situation.

By voting for or not filibustering the bill, many of the non-Lieberman Democrats will have been terrorized into voting against their own beliefs. In other words, Karl Rove has them so fuckin', shittin' themselves scared over a possible ad that says they don't support torture that they're willin' to sell out the Constitution to try to get another vote or two. They've decided to play on the Republicans home field, like always, letting them create the context. And they're missing the real meaning of stopping the bill.

The most frustrating thing, in a purely political context, outside of any, let's say, moral, ethical, or practical reasons to oppose the bill, is that the Democrats already have the foundation set for filibustering it. What has been the theme of the midterms for the Democrats? George Bush sucks balls and don't you wanna kick him in his own nuts? That's reading the mood of the country right. Poll after poll after poll after poll says that people would like to line up on Pennsylvania Avenue and take turns kicking George Bush in the balls, with a good cock-punching in there for the wheelchair-bound, legless Iraq war vets. Democrats can cover their asses on a filibuster so easily, so sublimely simply, and, as ever, they won't do it.

Here ya go - two more one-liners to save the Constitution and the foundation of the nation: "Do you trust George Bush to decide what torture is?" and "Do you want George Bush to be able to imprison anyone he wants for as long as he wants?" So deep is the nation's distrust of Bush that, by making the bill about him and not "defending the homeland." You need more? Maybe a little more pithy? "George Bush says he wants the tools to fight terror. Do you trust him with the toolbox?"

Democrats are really sittin' on a pair of aces. Time to split those motherfuckers.

I wouldn't trust George Bush with a pretzel!

The information that you bolded is a half-truth. In regards to the techniques that the President deems permissible, he will have to submit this information for Congressional oversight. In other words, the call doesn't begin and end at the President's desk.

In regards to the source of this analysis, one only needs to look at the links on the right side of the page to know that this is a Liberal Smear Site.

Actually, one needs only to read the address line of the website to see that it is a BLOG, and therefore an opinion page. One needs only read this blog to find that it has a very liberal bent. One needs only read this particular posting to see that the writer is not interested in truth in this case, but in formulating slogans that may be used to justify a filibuster/win an election.

At least when I post an opinion piece from a liberal blogger, I don’t try to disguise it as news. Fuck yeah, it’s a liberal smear site. Try refuting the facts presented.

I did. See the first paragraph in my previous reply.

Rushing Off a Cliff
Published: September 28, 2006

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opini ... ref=slogin

http://thismodernworld.com/3210

Making sure that the detainees are actually guilty of something, for a fair trial where they're presumed innocent until proven otherwise?

Yeah, that's accurate.

We've been saying this all along. Prove that they're terrorists, and we'll shut the hell up.