Bush Threatens Veto

Despite the fact that he has yet to veto anything coming out of Congress (a streak unmatched in modern American history), President Bush is threatening to veto the $440 billion Defense Appropriations bill because Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) succeeded in attaching (90-9) an amendment "defin[ing] and limit[ing] interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects." The bill bans the torture of anyone held by the US government and sets the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation as the standard. What a choice for your first veto; what a picture that sends to the world (Abu Ghraib isn't enough?). In a Sunday editorial, the Washington Post links opposition to this amendment with refusal to appoint an independent commission to investigate the "treatment of detainees since 2001."

There has been no investigation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, his senior staff, and White House and Justice Department lawyers who drafted or approved policies for detainee interrogations. There has been no investigation of CIA personnel, ranging from former director George J. Tenet to serving personnel in Iraq, who are known to have been involved in the illegal hiding of "ghost detainees" from the International Red Cross and the "rendition" of suspects to countries that practice torture, as well as in cases of torture and homicide. Even a promised investigation by the CIA's own inspector general has never been delivered to Congress...

We're willing to make a prediction: Some day there will be an exhaustive investigation of how and why prisoners were abused after 2001, and accountability will be assigned to the senior officers and officials who now hide behind their subordinates and inspector generals. Like the internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II or the CIA's involvement in Cold War-era coup plots and assassinations, government acts so at odds with fundamental American standards will eventually be exposed and disowned by our democracy.

In Florida, the St. Petersburg Times calls on Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, to honor "an obligation to rise above partisanship and uphold principles that should be beyond debate in a civilized society."

Liberal columnist Molly Ivans notes, with little irony, that the Administration is now justifying the US invasion of Iraq "because Saddam Hussein was such a horrible brute that he tortured people."

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