The Senate’s overwhelming approval of a torture ban was a clear statement of values – and a clear message to the Bush administration. We can’t help but wonder why the White House isn’t listening.
Despite President Bush’s insistence that the U.S. government doesn’t torture detainees in American custody, the Senate voted 90-9 recently to add an amendment to the military authorization and spending bills that prohibits interrogation methods that do not meet Army regulations and the Geneva Conventions. The House has yet to act on a similar measure, but we urge approval.
Vice President Dick Cheney has tried to persuade Congress to exempt the CIA from the proposed ban, and Bush has threatened a veto if the ban is included in the bill. While the president said Monday that the U.S. does not torture terror suspects, it’s a fact that nine Army reservists were convicted of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. And detaining suspects in secret prisons raises the question of what the Bush administration is trying to hide. Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war who sponsored the Senate torture ban, said this week, “America’s image throughout the world is very bad. Mistreatment of prisoners is one of the factors that has caused us to suffer so much in the eyes of the world.” Besides being cruel and inhumane, “torture doesn’t work,” McCain said.
The skirmish between Congress and the White House comes as the Supreme Court takes up a constitutional challenge to military trials for foreign terror suspects. The Bush administration says the tribunals are legal. Critics liken them to kangaroo courts. Legal scholars urged the court to take the case. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the court has ruled to limit the president’s war powers. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared last year that a “state of war is not a blank check for the president.”
It seems only right that the court hear the military tribunals case, though it won’t be heard until the spring, by which time O’Connor might very well be replaced. Chief Justice John Roberts has removed himself since he was a member of a three-judge appeals court panel that ruled last year that the president has the power to decide how detainees will be treated.Congress is right to be skeptical of the administration’s detention and interrogation policies, just as legal scholars have raised questions about the military trials.
Congress needs to brush off Cheney’s objections and move ahead with the torture ban – and Bush needs to sign it as an assurance to the world that he means what he says: “We do not torture.”
