Ah, McCain, you've done it again

Yanks won't get much from the title, but, for their edification, that phrase is as familiar to Aussies as the Ho-ho-ho of the Jolly Green Giant to Americans. But in this particular context, its the gauntlet that Senator John McCain is lowering on his El Presidente bid. And not before time.

McCain, Powell deliver blows to Bush proposal on detainees

President Bush's campaign for tougher legislation on terrorists suffered another blow today when Senate Republicans supported efforts to block his plan to reinterpret Geneva Convention restrictions on the interrogation of prisoners.

By a 15-9 vote, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and three other Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the change.

The rejection of Bush's plan could create a dramatic clash, particularly among Republicans campaigning for reelection as being strong on security issues, when the full Senate votes next week.

Today's vote came several hours after Colin Powell, the secretary of State in Bush's first term, spelled out his position in a letter to Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell said. "To redefine [a portion of the Geneva Convention] would add to those doubts."

More than that, he said, it could lead to the mistreatment of American troops captured in Iraq and elsewhere during the war on terrorism.

Powell's letter came as the Senate Armed Services Committee met in closed session to consider Bush's proposal. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.) joined Warner and McCain and all the Democrats on the committee in voting against the proposal.

Bush wants the authorization before the trials begin for 14 high-profile terrorists who have been taken to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from CIA prisons worldwide.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the military tribunals that were set up for prosecuting terror suspects needed congressional authorization. Bush does not want the new tribunals to be hamstrung by what the administration describes as the vague protections that the Geneva Convention, adopted shortly after World War II, offers to prisoners of war.

On Wednesday, a divided Senate Judiciary Committee muddied the outlook for an issue that Republicans consider key to the midterm elections when it approved widely divergent bills aimed at overhauling domestic eavesdropping laws.

The committee endorsed a White House-backed measure that would give President Bush broad authority for his warrantless wiretapping program. It also approved legislation by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would largely preserve a 1978 law governing domestic spying while making few provisions for new executive powers.

While one lawmaker decried the Senate approach as "totally contradictory," the House Judiciary Committee abruptly canceled a vote on its own version of the surveillance reform law amid signs of dissension among Republicans there.

Showdown Set Between Rice and Powell

The next big showdown here is going to be between two secretaries of state.

It covers the argument between the White House and Republican opponents of its proposal to authorize military trials for captured Al Qaeda leaders. The two sides offered dueling letters setting out the competing arguments: one from Secretary of State Powell, arguing for the dissident senators, and one from Secretary of State Rice, defending President Bush.

On a day when Mr. Bush placed a rare call on Republican House lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Senator McCain, a Republican from Arizona, released a caustic letter from Mr. Powell complaining that the White House bill would fuel doubts from the rest of the world on "the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

A few hours later, the White House released a similarly pugnacious letter from the former general's successor, Ms. Rice, who wrote that the standards applied to interrogators under the president's bill would be exactly the same as the torture ban sponsored by Mr. McCain in 2005, known as the Detainee Treatment Act.

At issue is Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions, which outlaws "cruel" and "degrading" treatment for captured prisoners of war. Mr. Bush has said the treaty's language is too vague for America's interrogators in the war on terrorism and that it would place them potentially at the mercy of foreign courts, where they could be tried as war criminals.

Rebuff for Bush on terror trials in a Senate test

Powell's statement amounted to a rare public breach with the White House he served, but reflected his strong opposition while in office to the administration's assertions, beginning shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the war against Al Qaeda should not be bound by the Geneva Conventions.

The main dispute between the White House and the Senate Republicans revolves around a provision known as Common Article 3, which prohibits inhumane treatment of combatants seized in wartime. General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, has argued that the article's prohibition against "outrages upon personal dignity" must be clarified so that troops and CIA personnel know what is permissible in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

But Senators Warner, McCain and Graham say the Bush proposal would send a signal that the United States has abandoned its commitment to human rights, and invite other nations to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions as they see fit, eliminating protections for American troops seized in future conflicts.

The senators also dismissed the letter from the military lawyers, saying they had questions about whether it amounted to an authentic endorsement of the White House proposal. They said they put more weight on extensive public testimony in which the lawyers raised doubts about the Bush plan.

Some military officials briefed on the military lawyers' position also disputed the notion that the lawyers had reversed course. They said the lawyers agreed to sign a letter at a meeting on Wednesday after discussing the language over several hours.

The lawyers would agree only to say that they could not find anything illegal about the specific issue of amending Common Article 3, the defense officials said, but still do not endorse several points in the administration's approach.

The senators say their bill will protect the CIA by refining the war crimes act, which criminalizes violations of Common Article 3, to specifically enumerate what violations constitute war crimes.

"What General Hayden wants us to do is immunize him not from liability but from criticism," McCain said after the vote, "because if one of his techniques is made public and he gets criticized, then he can say, 'Well, Congress told me to do it.' He's trying to protect his reputation at the risk of America's reputation."

The other chief dispute concerns the evidence admitted at trial. The Bush plan would allow hearsay and evidence obtained by coercion if it is considered reliable, while the Senate proposal would exclude any testimony obtained by "cruel inhuman, or degrading treatment."

The White House would bar the suspect from seeing classified evidence shown to the jury weighing his case; the senators say that this amounts to a secret trial, and that the suspect must be allowed to see anything the jury sees. They offered a compromise under which a judge would substitute a declassified summary of the evidence.

The committee vote was 15 to 9, with all Democrats joining the four Republicans. The measure now goes to the Senate floor, where Senators Warner, Graham and McCain believe they have a majority made up of Democrats and as many as a half-dozen other Republicans.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, warned the administration against taking on McCain, a former prisoner of war.

"They're trying to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions," Levin said, "but the best expert on that is somebody who has very personal experience with those who violate Geneva, and that's Senator McCain."

The situation in the House is very different, with that chamber on track to approve the measure backed by the White House.

"We'll do what the president wants," said Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

The White House and Republicans on either side of the issue maneuvered furiously for advantage all day.

As the Senate Armed Services Committee met to vote on its alternative to the president's legislation, an anonymous Republican invoked a Senate rule to stop it from meeting, forcing Warner to go to the Senate floor to ask that the hold be lifted. He then praised the Democrats for being "totally cooperative" on the issue, a pointed rebuke to members of his own party who have been pushing the White House view. And he prevailed upon Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, to persuade the senator calling for the hold to lift it.

The White House must now decide whether to press its allies in the Senate to amend the bill on the floor, or to step back and wait until the bill passes and the House and Senate work out differences in conference.

The bill may face amendment in any case. Some Democrats object to a provision that would block detainees from challenging their detention in court. More than two dozen retired federal judges sent a letter to Congress arguing that such a provision would lead to unlawful permanent detention, and defy Supreme Court precedent.

Senate Panel Defies Bush on Terror

"I will resist any bill that does not enable this program to go forward with legal clarity," Bush said at the White House.

The president's measure would go further than the Senate package in allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials, using coerced testimony and protecting CIA and other U.S. interrogators against prosecution for using methods that may violate the Geneva Conventions.

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell, a retired general who is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his letter.

Senate panel defies Bush on terror

Firing back, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Powell was "confused" about the White House plan. Later, Snow said he probably shouldn't have used that word.

"I know that Colin Powell wants to beat the terrorists, too," he said.

Dear Senator McCain, ....