A Question of Human Dignity

"'By applying the Field Manual's standards to all US government interrogations, Congress will bring America back from the brink -- back to our values, back to basic decency, back to the rule of law,' he said."

Kerry Sheridan reports for the Associated Press that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino reiterated this morning that Bush will veto the bill.

"Today with this bill that they are sending to us they would basically repeal the terrorist interrogation program in favor of something that will definitely weaken our ability to protect the country," Perino said.

Meanwhile, the administration is apparently backpedaling from its insistence just last week that additional waterboarding could be approved by the president, depending on the circumstances.

Laurie Kellman writes for the Associated Press: "A senior Justice Department official says laws and other limits enacted since three terrorism suspects were waterboarded has eliminated the technique from what is now legally allowed, going a step beyond what CIA Director Michael Hayden has said.

"'The set of interrogation methods authorized for current use is narrower than before, and it does not today include waterboarding,' Steven G. Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, says in remarks prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Judiciary Constitution subcommittee.

"'There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law,' he said. It is the first time the department has expressed such an opinion publicly."

It's kind of odd coming from Bradbury. As the New York Times reported in October, it was Bradbury who in 2005 signed secret legal memos that gave the CIA "explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures."

Opinion Watch

Rosa Brooks writes in her Los Angeles Times opinion column: "[H]ere's what I don't get. Bush has less than a year left in office. His approval ratings are already abysmally low. Why is he determined to compound his problems by going down in history as the first president to openly order and justify torture? Is this really the legacy he wants to leave behind?

"The task for the next president, Democrat or Republican, is clear. Very soon after taking office, our next president needs to lay this monster to rest by unambiguously repudiating waterboarding and all forms of torture.

"That's the easy part of the next president's task, though. The hard part? Prying the thumbscrews out of the Bush administration's cold, dead hands."

Nicholas D. Kristof, in his New York Times opinion column, offers the story of Sami al-Hajj, an al-Jazeera cameraman being held in Guantanamo, as an example of the inhumanity that continues there to this day.