Also at issue is the application of the Geneva Conventions. The President argues that American professionals tasked with interrogating terrorists need clarification about the overly broad Geneva Conventions in order to extract information that could help avert attacks on the homeland. The tactics used to extract this information, argues the president, must be validated by Congress or else interrogators will not be able to move forward with interrogations that, according to a new ABC news report, have already helped avert as many as 12 terrorist attacks against the United States.
The Gang plus three says no. McCain, in a statement on his Website, made clear that he thinks the president’s approach “weakens” the Geneva Conventions while setting “an example to other countries, with less respect for basic human rights, that they could issue their own legislative ‘reinterpretations.’”
But McCain’s approach assumes our enemy has even some remote standard of moral decency and respect for the Geneva Conventions. Surely an enemy that routinely kills innocents while beheading kidnapped victims on camera cares nothing for such notions. That does not mean that America should also disregard the Geneva Conventions; the administration is not arguing for that.
In a press conference this week Bush laid it out. “I am asking Congress to pass a clear law with clear guidelines,” he said. He added he only has one test as far as the legislation was concerned: The intelligence community must confirm that whatever Congress passes will allow the current administration program (the one that has thwarted attacks) to continue. If Congress passes a law to the contrary -- similar to the one supported by the Gang plus three -- Bush says the program will be discontinued.
That would be an outcome far different than the one resulting from the Gang’s first foray onto the national stage.