Negotiators try to resolve detainee-abuse language

Congressional leaders are working to hammer out compromise language on military detainee-abuse legislation as lawmakers are cramming to finish business for the year.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) met yesterday with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and the ranking Democrats from each committee to discuss the controversial issue, according to committee aides.

The meeting was scheduled to discuss a number of others matters pertaining to defense reauthorization, but detainee-abuse language offered by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that was included in the Senate version of the bill is still holding up the conference report before leaders can bring it to a vote.

The Senate this fall overwhelmingly passed — as part of the both the 2006 defense appropriations and authorization bill — an amendment sponsored by McCain that would require all Department of Defense interrogation techniques to be standardized and contained within the Army Field Manual.

The McCain amendment also seeks to the ban cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees, a sticking point with the White House, which insists that it does not treat prisoners of war cruelly and inhumanely.

The White House has threatened to veto the defense authorization or appropriations bill if it includes McCain’s language.

McCain is meeting independently with the White House and Senate Armed Services Committee to work out a compromise, according to committee staff.

“I hope Senator McCain is working to find some ground that both he and the White House can agree upon,” said House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

McCain is not willing to alter his bill significantly.

“It’s unacceptable to change the McCain amendment … either by changing the language of the amendment or by putting other language in the conference report that would thereby gut our amendment,” a McCain spokesperson said.

The treatment of foreign combatants became a major issue after revelations of prison abuse in Abu Ghraib and has picked up steam in recent weeks with the publication of stories in The Washington Post documenting secret CIA prisons in foreign countries that were set up with the help of foreign governments.

But the White House considers that standardizing the treatment of detainees would encumber the president’s dealings in the war on terrorism.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, when asked why the United States does not abide by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq, said Monday that the Geneva Conventions apply to people who are part of a military organization.

“The Geneva Convention purposely awarded people who presented themselves” as part of a military organization, Rumsfeld said during a speech at Johns Hopkins University. The insurgents in Iraq who blow up children and women do not deserve the same treatment, he said. Nevertheless, the Bush administration decided that those captured should be treated “humanely,” Rumsfeld said.

Hunter, who sides with the White House, said that McCain’s legislation may not be necessary because anti-torture protections already exist in law. Congress last year added a torture statute in the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill to broaden its coverage to prohibit torture at U.S. facilities abroad.

By standardizing procedures in one document, the troops will know what is in and out of bounds, argued Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in a recent Washington Post opinion piece. Graham and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, co-sponsored McCain’s amendment.

The amendment passed by a 90-9 vote on the defense appropriations bill and by voice vote on the defense authorization bill.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) voted in favor of the amendment even though he pulled the defense authorization bill from the floor in July, in part because of the White House’s opposition to the provision. He brought the bill back up this fall.

Some GOP House appropriators have been struggling with the McCain amendment on the defense-spending bill, arguing that it is a policy measure, which belongs solely on the authorization bill.

House leadership has been working for weeks to try to strip the McCain language from the defense appropriations conference report. But leaders have met with resistance from Democratic hawk John Murtha (D-Pa.), ranking member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, who said he would introduce a motion to instruct conferees to vote on the torture amendment.

The motion to instruct is nonbinding, but Murtha has argued that he would have an overwhelming vote in the House. At least 17 GOP members are supporting Murtha.

Some congressional sources have said that appropriators may want to see the defense authorization bill go to the floor before the defense appropriations bill so that the detainee amendment could be voted on as part of that bill and clear the path for the appropriators.

Meanwhile, Blunt hinted yesterday that defense reauthorization could be included in an end-of-the-year spending bill that would also include the labor and health and human services appropriation measure, legislation to provide federal funding for avian flu vaccines, and a relief bill for the Hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.