US Features
White House under siege on politics of torture
By Klaus Marre
Nov 2, 2005, 19:00 GMT

Washington - Despite repeated assurances that the United States does not torture detainees, the Bush administration cannot seem to shake off questions about U.S. treatment of terror suspects.

The administration is engaged these days in a concerted effort to derail or water down a provision making its way through Congress that would limit interrogations in the war on terror and ban 'cruel, inhuman and degrading' treatment of U.S.-held detainees.

Senator John McCain, a member of President George W. Bush's Republican Party, is the driving force behind the anti-torture proposal and says the White House is doing 'everything it can to carve out an exemption' for the CIA.

'I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't torture people,' McCain told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa this week.

Vice President Dick Cheney has visited Congress to persuade lawmakers to change the language of the legislation. When asked Tuesday by dpa if the U.S. ever condones the use of torture, Cheney did not comment as he walked into a meeting with Senate Republicans.

Reports of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba have persistently dogged the Bush administration.

In the latest wrinkle, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that the CIA has been holding terrorist suspects in secret prisons at various locations around the world, including unnamed democratic countries in Eastern Europe.

A day earlier, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected a U.N. request to gain access to the Guantanamo detainees.

White House opposition to McCain's effort has led to strong criticism in U.S. editorial pages.

The White House maintains that the language, which has passed the Senate by a vote of 90-9, would 'restrict the President's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice.'

Not so, says McCain, a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam who was tortured.

'They say it would impair their ability to gather intelligence,' he stated. 'I disagree.'

Bush has publicly spoken out on several occasions against torture.

'The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being,' he said June 26, 2004. In 2003, he said the U.S. is leading the fight against torture by example.

But reports of prisoner and detainee abuse have marred the U.S. image abroad, and backers of McCain's amendments say this hurts the effort to build alliances in the war on terror. <!--page-->

The Washington Post reported that the administration has used national security concerns to convince key members of Congress not to talk in public about the detention centres, and that nearly nothing is known about who is being held in the facilities and what interrogation methods are being used.

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated Wednesday that the U.S. is doing everything by the book.

'There are laws and treaty obligations that we are obligated to adhere to and we do,' he said in response to a dpa question on the issue of torture. With regard to the Post report, McClellan said he could not comment on intelligence matters.

The White House is relying on its allies in the Republican- controlled House of Representatives to derail the McCain amendment, which is attached to the 440-billion-dollar defence spending bill for the 2006 budget year.

House and Senate negotiators who are seeking an agreed defence spending plan could drop the amendment in the process. But the amendment will likely also be attached to another defence bill, and McCain and his supporters will have a seat at the table when that legislation is negotiated with the House.

If a bill with the torture prohibition makes it into legislation that reaches Bush's desk and he were to veto it, the president would 'declare to the world his administration's moral bankruptcy', the Washington Post said in a recent editorial.