A Dangerous Veto Threat

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 10:29 AM

It would be an understatement to say the war in Iraq has done little to bolster the perception of the United States around the world. But the administration's opposition to a provision that would ban the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad risks sending the image of this country over another cliff -- as well as losing yet another opportunity to win the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East.

Raising the stakes for President Bush is the fact that his administration's position on the torture bill is at odds with prominent Republicans, most notably Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a Vietnam War hero who spent five years as a POW in Hanoi.

"If we are viewed as a country that engages in torture ... any possible information we might be able to gain is far counterbalanced by (the negative) effect of public opinion," McCain said on CBS's "Face the Nation" this week. He added that while "terrorists are 'the quintessence of evil,' it's not about them; it's about us. This battle we're in is about the things we stand for and believe in and practice. And that is an observance of human rights, no matter how terrible our adversaries may be."

Opponents of the provision, which McCain introduced as an amendment to the Defense Appropriation Act, are having a hard time making their case. The Senate passed McCain's bill by a vote of 90-9, with 46 Republicans including Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) in favor, despite the intense lobbying against it by Vice President Cheney.

Another decorated war veteran, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that he thinks "the administration is making a terrible mistake in opposing John McCain's amendment on detainees and torture. Why in the world they're doing that, I don't know. You've got 90 Senators out of 100 and that includes many Republicans opposed to it."

The bill codifies the Army Field Manual's rules prohibiting torture. The Senate rebuffed a number of entreaties from Cheney that would have watered down the measure, including an amendment that would have exempted the CIA from its provisions.

The issue now moves to conference, where the House must agree to place the measure in its version of the Defense Appropriation Act. Fifteen Republican House members--mostly from moderate northern or northeastern states--have signed a letter to the GOP House leadership urging the conferees do accept the McCain language and send it on to the White House.

"We strongly support President Bush's efforts to defeat terrorism and also believe that these provisions will play a crucial role in winning that struggle," the 15 Republicans wrote. "They will provide vital clarity about the values and standards by which America lives in contrast to our enemies. President Bush has said that America will stand firm on the non-negotiable demands of human dignity and will treat all detainees humanely. The Anti-Torture Provisions implement this pledge."

A long list of former high-ranking military officials has endorsed the McCain amendment as well.

These entreaties appear to be falling on deaf ears at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

On Sunday, a top-ranking White House official, refused to rule out the use of torture. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said on CNN that there were circumstances, such as an imminent 9/11-scale attack, when torture might be necessary.

"What happens if on September 7th of 2001, we had gotten one of the hijackers and based on information associated with that arrest, believed that within four days, there's going to be a devastating attack on the United States?" Hadley said, citing something that is commonly known as the "ticking bomb" scenario. "It's a difficult dilemma to know what to do in that circumstance to both discharge our responsibility to protect the American people from terrorist attack, and follow the president's guidance of staying within the confines of law. These are difficult issues."

Certainly. But bill supporters argue that no reasonable person would worry about torture restrictions under a possible end-of-world, ticking bomb scenario. And in any case, such arguments are little more than a subterfuge that obscures the real debate over every day treatment of prisoners in the wake of revelations of prisoner mistreatment in recent years at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, and secret prisons run outside the U.S.

"The Pentagon itself recognizes itself that it has a huge problem" related to treatment of U.S.-held prisoners abroad, said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, a nonprofit international human rights organization. "That's why you see so many retired military voices coming to the fore. This conduct, whether you think it's deliberate at worst, or at the least, civilian leaders failing to monitor what others are doing, this has been incredibly damaging to U.S. security interests.

"It's putting our troops oversees at even greater risk than they are already. It's badly damaged relations with allies. And it's made it harder to get cooperation on counterterrorism agreements because people are concerned that we're going to mistreat prisoners. And it has clearly inflamed our enemies or people who otherwise wouldn't be our enemies overseas."

Pearlstein coauthored a comprehensive report on this subject, called "Behind the Wire: Ending Secret Detentions." Among other things, the report details the extensive effort of the U.S. government to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. The report says, for instance, that the State Department and U.S. Board of Broadcasters, which overseas non-military international broadcasting, is spending some $42 million on pro-U.S. radio and television in the region. But those efforts are undermined by reports of torture and prisoner mistreatment at U.S. facilities around the world.

"The United States' ability to deploy these tools effectively depends critically on visible demonstration that the United States' deeds match its words in supporting democracy and human rights," Pearlstein and colleague Priti Patel wrote in the wrote. "In Indonesia, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry stated: 'The U.S. government does not have the moral authority to assess or act as a judge of other countries, including Indonesia, on human rights, especially after the abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.'"

The United States has been, until recently, a leader in the fight for human rights on the battlefield, backing both the Geneva Convention and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified in 1994, and bans the torture of prisoners.

Of course, many of those nations continue to torture in secret, even as they proclaim to abhor the practice. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has come under fire repeatedly for sending captured terrorism suspects to countries that continue to torture.

Today, amazingly, America finds itself embroiled in the same kind of debate that Iran--one of the three nation's Bush admonished as a part of the "axis of evil"-- had three years ago when hardliners in the conservative Guardian Council repeatedly vetoed a version of a bill banning the torture of prisoners that had been pushed through the parliament by moderate backers of President Mohammad Khatami.

"This is supposed to be a war for hearts and minds, and a war to show the world that the we have standards," said Katherine Newell Bierman, counterterrorism counsel for the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch. "Otherwise, we have the same means-to-an-ends approach, and it is not who we are as the American people. How many recruiting posters for al Qaeda have a picture of what was happened at Abu Ghraib? And what does it do to America's ability to effectively counter a long-term threat?"

Sen. McCain and his allies know the answer to those questions.

E-mail your comments to Terry at commentsforneal@washingtonpost.com.