The Senate Armed Services Committee defied President Bush on Sept. 14 and passed, 15-9, a bill establishing tribunals to try suspected terrorists that lacks the White House’s preferred language. The White House version, which earlier cleared the House Armed Services Committee, 52-8, would alter longstanding interpretations of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, giving the military and the Central Intelligence Agency what amounts to legal sanction for interrogation methods that killjoy human rights groups might call torture. The Senate-committee-passed version includes language opposed by the White House that forbids “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment,” language deliberately lifted from Article 3. (The Bush administration presumably regards humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners as a vital weapon in the war on terrorism.) The two versions of the bill will now proceed to floor votes in the House and Senate, and, if substantial differences remain, the upper and lower bodies will duke it out in conference committee.
The Senate committee was urged to ignore its marjority-party standard-bearer by none other than Colin Powell, who, you may recall, used to work for the guy. Powell’s letter blindsided the White House, and its press spokesman, Tony Snow, responded by suggesting, condescendingly, that President Bush’s former secretary of state had failed to “understand what we’re trying to do here.” The greater likelihood is that Powell, whose letter is reproduced below, understands all too well what Bush is trying to achieve.
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