John McCain, on This Week, talked about "possible compromise" on the torture issue. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen (and I have my doubts - were compromise possible it would not have become a nasty public battle, and Bush's public statements make compromise a clear loss for Republicans in an election season). But for the moment what's very clear is this:
On one side of the debate are the Bush administration and most of the 55 Republicans in the Senate, who say U.S. interrogators should be viewed as following the Geneva Conventions as long as they do not engage in "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment barred by a 2005 federal law. The administration and its backers in Congress also want to allow military commissions to be able to convict suspected terrorists after viewing classified evidence that the suspects can't see.
There is support for Bush's position in the House and in some of the state parties, including South Carolina's Republican chair (also reported on This Week). Nonetheless, this is a battle the President of the United States will lose.
Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Sunday Times, observes that the split in the Republican Party continues:
To add to the revolt, last week six leading conservative writers penned separate essays on why the Republicans deserve to lose the November congressional elections. Here's a stunning quote from one of them: "The United States has seen political swings and produced its share of extremists, but its political character, whether liberals or conservatives have been in charge, has always remained fundamentally Burkean. The constitution itself is a Burkean document, one that slows down decisions to allow for `deliberate sense' and checks and balances.
"President Bush has nearly upended that tradition, abandoning traditional realism in favour of a warped and incoherent brand of idealism. At this dangerous point in history, we must depend on the decisions of an astonishingly feckless chief executive: an empty vessel filled with equal parts Rove and Rousseau."
That passage was written by Jeffrey Hart, a speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan and another pillar of the conservative movement. It's a sign of a brewing conservative revolt against Bush's policies that may crest at November's elections.
Bush has allies in the House of Representatives -- but what appears to be a unified and stalwart resistance in the Republican-controlled Senate. It turns out that the US does have a functioning opposition party after all. It's called the authentically conservative wing of the Republicans.
Andrew needs to count the votes in the Senate and House to see how small that wing actually is. And as for Bush's legacy and relationship with his base:
His legacy, I'd argue, is actually quite decipherable. It includes two bungled wars, a doubling of the national debt, a ruination of America's moral high ground in the war against Islamist terror, the worst US intelligence fiasco since the Bay of Pigs, and the emergence of Iran as a regional and potentially nuclear power with control of the West's energy supplies.
But the damage to America itself -- to its cultural balance and constitutional order -- is just as profound. In a recent CNN story on Southern women and the Republicans, one voter explained: "There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord. I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through."
The takeaway message is that more and more conservatives, from William Buckley to Andrew Sullivan, are losing their taste for supporting this President and their policies. None of them have particularly good things to say about Democrats. But, if they don't care for the Democrats, they are welcome to stay home in November.
The fact that the government wants to use information that is classified as evidence against the combatant without allowing him to see that said information scares the holy crap out of me. The only way this discussion is even being considered or allowed is because the americans who support it assume it could never be used against them.
We need a movie/documentary, of an american born muslim who gets accused as a combatant using phone intercepts and is then "accidently" killed during his interrogation. His interview with Gregory questioning was an amazing peek into the desperation he feels about this. I think there are big problems down the pike regarding the procedures that the military engaged in, and if he doesn't get these laws changed, he will look even worse. He has no choice but to pursue this change. His first option was silence. Hoping that the world wouldn't care or know what they were doing. Now the world knows, then came Hamden, and the rumor is that somebody out there wants to charge Bush with war crimes.
He seems very desperate to me...and my only hope is that desperation will cause a misstep.
Posted by: Katie Jensen | September 17, 2006 at 11:08
When "straight-talk"McCain was talking about "possible compromise," was he really telling the WH that he is ready to cave in and sign off on Bush's pro-torture bill?
Posted by: KdmFromPhila | September 17, 2006 at 11:15
...he [McCain]is ready to cave in and sign off on Bush's pro-torture bill?
McCain wins the White House if and only if he wins the primaries.
That places tight constraints on how far he can wander away from the monarchist crazies.
Posted by: Davis X. Machina | September 17, 2006 at 11:27
Davis X. Machina answers KdmFromPhila as far as what McCain says. What he does is another story entirely. That's the art of politics, for good or for bad.
Posted by: DemFromCT | September 17, 2006 at 11:45
There already is the story of the Canadian Muslim who was tortured after being rendered to another country. I think that they are afraid of what will come out about the 14 "high value" targets they brought to Guantanamo with such fanfare. They were supremely confident they could try them in kangaroo courts and prevent any interviews, say by the Red Cross. But things don't seem to be going according to plan (what's new) and now they are getting desperate. But ironically the more desperate Bush gets, as in his press conference last week, the more nervous his more independent allies get. There's only 7 weeks before the midterms, so they are running out of time.
Posted by: Mimikatz | September 17, 2006 at 12:01
Who leaked? I think it was dems like Plame at CIA complaining at a good time for democrats. NSA thing was the same. Democrats working out of their federal jobs to 'help' the democratic party as an excuse for treason.
Posted by: Sora | September 17, 2006 at 12:28
Too many people still mistakenly think McCain is a straight-talker. He is given the opportunity to spout sound-bites whenever he chooses and the subject is then closed. Time for his worshipful media to follow-through with what he actually does, not what he says he'll do. He caves in to Bush every time.
Posted by: Sally | September 17, 2006 at 12:37
I have no love for McCain. But on this one, he wins and Bush loses. They can't both win. They can both lose.
Posted by: DemFromCT | September 17, 2006 at 13:03
McCain will "compromise." Then, Bush will sign a signing statement, and say he'll do whatever he damned well pleases.
Posted by: pol | September 17, 2006 at 13:04
I think we are in a time of transition as nations, as communications and travel are more accessible, the existence of a stateless theocratic terror organization (STTO) became possible, though its resemblance to the atheistic laborcentric international communist ideology of the past is visible.
Countries usually have gendarmes deal with terrorism, so our sending a few armies offshore to create focal points for dealing with the networked STTOs is a new experience. I liked that the chief lawyers in the US military denied the administration's first stated goals for inhumane treatment standards dilution in the armed services committee hearing. But reportedly there is some semantic reworking of their objections and now the military is accepting of the treatment standards.
As 'pol' alludes, above, Bush attached a signing statement to the McCain antitorture amendment in December 2005; I am sure McCain must have come away baffled, having weakened his initially stern language in the process of attaching his amendment to Graham-Levin.
There may be a few individuals who have low morals involved, but I prefer to think a lot of people are doing their best with a knotty problem and an elusive adversary. One of the timeworn scapegoats for many Republicans' politics, however, the UN, could help the US, and many other nations who are dealing with terrorist network entities. I wonder if John Bolton has a vision of how the UN could help countries beset by problems with terrorists address the international aspect of the damage it does to the world order.
On a more diffuse scale, I see the entire process of the rise of terrorism in parallel with the dawn of internet communications, as a drift away from statism and toward individualism. In a way it is a retrogression to some of the individuality our ancestors had, but it is an entirely new framework. And we have all this leisure time in which to be individuals excelling in our own work.
On McCain, I see him as a staunch conservative with a few libertarian policies; kind of a replica of the current center of the Republican party. The minority party by far. These have been a few strange years beginning with a minority presidency by Bush in 2000, seeming to get more eccentric as time progresses.
Posted by: JohnLopresti | September 17, 2006 at 14:05
A simpler interp is that McCain-Warner-Graham dealt with military and uniformed services but having discovered that CIA was not covered, they want to add that.
I'm not sure that's the whole picture but it may be part of it.
These guys are NOT progressives but there are certain shared values.
Posted by: DemFromCT | September 17, 2006 at 14:56
There may be a few individuals who have low morals involved, but I prefer to think a lot of people are doing their best with a knotty problem and an elusive adversary.
I prefer to think that I'm an awesome chick magnet, but there's damn little evidence for that, either...
Sometimes what you see is all there is.
Posted by: Davis X. Machina | September 17, 2006 at 16:12