Bush wants the CIA to have the ability

to use a wide variety of techniques,

not just waterboarding

He said that the bill “would eliminate all

the alternative procedures we’ve developed to question

the world’s most dangerous and violent terrorists”

Bush Vetoes Bill Outlawing Torture Techniques

On Saturday, Bush vetoed a law that would have banned the CIA from using certain torture techniques. In doing so, he affirmed once again the utter criminality of his administration.

There are a number of factors behind the administration’s insistence that no constraints be placed on the CIA’s interrogation policy.

First, there is real concern that any move to make certain methods illegal would open up a debate over their previous legality.

In ordering waterboarding, Bush and other administration officials stand guilty of violating domestic and international law, for which severe sanctions are included in the US War Crimes Act.

Second, the Republican Party is eager to run in the elections on the issues of “national security” and terrorism.

It is significant that Republican candidate John McCain reversed his past association with anti-torture legislation by voting against the intelligence authorization bill because it included the language restricting CIA operations.

More fundamentally, the Bush administration is determined to defend the principle of unrestrained executive power in authorizing the US military and intelligence agencies to operate without any legal constraints.

References to the “war on terror” and “national security” have nothing to do with supposed threats against the US or “ticking time bomb scenarios.”

Within the framework of the American political establishment, these are code words for the willingness to use military force to defend the interests of the American ruling class internationally.

In particular, torture is not used to gain information from would be terrorists, but as a tool in suppressing and intimidating any opposition to American militarism—at home or abroad.

The great advantage of the Bush administration in its conflict with the Democrats is that the administration represents more directly the interests of American capitalism.

Under conditions of economic crisis and growing challenges to US interests abroad, the utter ruthlessness of the Bush administration reflects its determination to use repression and violence wherever and whenever it is necessary.

The Democrats are no less committed to the defense of these interests than the Republicans, but they seek to posture as critics of the administration.

They want the ends, but are worried about the domestic and international consequences of the means used to reach these ends.

For this reason, the Democrats are constantly vacillating, but always there when it counts to facilitate war and domestic repression.

Leading Democrats have been complicit from the beginning in supporting the policy of torture.

They are adamantly opposed to any measures that would hold anyone accountable for these actions, since they are themselves complicit in them.

Bush is confident, with good reason, that by ritualistically repeating the mantra of the “war on terror,” he will succeed in cowing the Democrats into abandoning their attempt to curtail presidential powers.

Bush's Tortured Veto

Congress should enhance the truth by overriding

President Bush's shameful veto of a ban on torture.

'We do not torture," President Bush insists, yet that assurance is accompanied by an unspoken "but."

In vetoing legislation that would require CIA interrogators to abide by the same humanitarian standards imposed on their counterparts in the U.S. military, Bush again has drowned out his denials with an ominous silence about just what "enhanced" interrogation tactics he considers appropriate.

In a shameful Saturday radio address justifying his veto, Bush argued that CIA interrogators can't be confined to techniques allowed by the Army Field Manual "because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet."

So, of course, are the Geneva Convention and the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibit "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."

By the president's logic, acceptance of the humanitarian standards included in those documents also deprives the United States of the element of surprise.

Bush has been playing a dangerous game, forswearing torture while making the argument that suspected terrorists must be made to give up their secrets at any cost.

In his radio address, he claimed that the CIA interrogation program pried loose information that helped avert a series of terrorist attacks, including one in Los Angeles. If the stakes are that high and the alternatives futile, why not torture?

The best propaganda answer to that question was offered by John McCain in 2005. With his his usual hyperbolic Islamophobia he called terrorists "the quintessence of evil."

McCain insisted that "it's not about them; it's about us. This battle we're in is about the things we stand for and believe in and practice. And that is an observance of human rights, no matter how terrible our adversaries may be." McCain turns the tables - it's all right to feel hatred towards radical Islam while simultaneously feeling good about our own 'principles.'

The man who spoke those weasel words before he became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee voted against the legislation Bush vetoed.

But McCain was as right in 2005 as he is wrong now. By reserving the right to use unspecified enhanced interrogation methods, the United States -- especially the United States under this president -- abandons the moral high ground.

That is why, on balance, it serves America's interests for there to be a single standard for interrogation techniques.

The Army Field Manual provides such a single standard. And, yes, it tells America's enemies in specific terms what this country will not do. Are those the techniques Bush wants to preserve as options for the CIA?

If so, radical resistance fighters already know from the Field Manual what they involve and, according to the president, can undergo training to resist them.

If the president has other, even harsher, tactics in mind, then the assurance that "we don't torture" rings even hollower. Congress should end his word games by voting to override his veto.

Radio Fear America

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the funnies over the radio to cheer up New Yorkers during a newspaper strike.

President Franklin Roosevelt gave “fireside chats” to bolster Americans during the depression.

President Bush used his radio address on Saturday to try to scare Americans into believing they have to sacrifice their rights and their values to combat terrorism.

Mr. Bush announced that he had vetoed the 2008 intelligence budget because it contains a clause barring the C.I.A. from torturing prisoners.

Mr. Bush told the nation that it “would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror — the C.I.A. program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives.”

That is simply not true. Nothing in the bill shuts down the C.I.A. interrogation program. It just requires the C.I.A.’s interrogators to follow the rules already contained in the Army field manual on prisoners.

The manual does not stop interrogators from questioning prisoners aggressively.

It simply forbids the use of techniques that are regarded by most civilized people as abuse and torture, including sexual abuse, electric shocks, mock executions and the infamous form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding.

In a letter we published on Sunday, Mark Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman, said the agency has no objections to those restrictions and that the “C.I.A. neither conducts nor condones torture.”

We’re glad he cleared that up. Mr. Mansfield’s boss, the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael Hayden, told Congress recently that he had banned waterboarding in 2006 (after the courts started questioning Mr. Bush’s detention policies), but he was still “not certain” whether it is legal.

General Hayden’s boss, the director of national intelligence, thinks it is, and Vice President Dick Cheney apparently agrees.

That made us wonder what Mr. Mansfield had in mind when he wrote that the field manual is too confining, that there are interrogation techniques the C.I.A. wants to use but won’t talk about. He said they are necessary and approved by the Justice Department and the intelligence committees in Congress.

But the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, John Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, disagreed strongly.

He said the veto itself would hurt intelligence-gathering “in the name of preserving a separate C.I.A. interrogation program that Congress has determined is not necessary and, in fact, counterproductive.”

Mr. Bush said the C.I.A. program helped “prevent a number of attacks,” but Mr. Rockefeller said he had “heard nothing” to suggest that was true. He also said any information the C.I.A. collected could have been obtained through legal methods.

This is not the first time that Mr. Bush has misled Americans on intelligence-gathering and antiterrorism operations, and it may not be the last. It will be up to the next president to restore the rule of law.