The administration refuses attempts by some Republicans to place a legislative ban on torture.
By: Hank Kalet
OK. So I violated my own promise and missed all of last week on the blog. But you’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been down with one of those tenacious summer colds that sneak into the body and ties it up in knots. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say I’m on day eight of it I haven’t gone running since last Monday and spent all day Saturday glued to the couch where I was forced to watch one bad movie after another. On the bright side, though, I did manage to catch up on my magazine reading.
Add to the illness a house full of relatives for an entire week and a news editor on vacation and … well, let’s just say I feel lucky just to have gotten the papers out.
But on to more pressing and interesting concerns before I head off to the doctor:
Bob Herbert writes today about a legislative amendment to a nearly half-trillion-dollar Pentagon authorization bill for fiscal 2006.
The amendments come from three Republican hawks who want to force American soldiers to abide by the standards we have theoretically set for ourselves as a nation.
According to Herbert, the legislative amendments would "prohibit cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody."
Opponents have pushed the argument that the legislation would interfere with the fight against terrorism and that the detainees are not entitled to these kinds of protections because they are not prisoners of war, but enemy combatants.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who is sponsoring the legislation along with Sens. Larry Graham of South Carolina and John Warner of Virginia, offers a pretty pointed response: He "argued that the debate ‘is not about who they are. It’s about who we are.’ Americans, said Mr. McCain, ‘hold ourselves’ to a higher standard." (quoted by Herbert)
The White House, in refusing to support the legislation, proves that its concern about what happened at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was just for the cameras. The fact is that this White House, this administration wants no one looking over its shoulder. It wants all "interrogative methods" to remain available, even those that violate what we as a nation have always stood for.