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Bush asks GOP to back terror bills
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

President Bush visited Capitol Hill Thursday where he conferred behind closed doors with House Republicans on legislation to give the government more power to spy on, imprison and interrogate terrorism suspects.

"I will resist any bill that does not enable this plan to go forward," Bush told reporters back at the White House after his meeting with lawmakers.

Bush's proposals would narrow the U.S. legal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in a bid to allow tougher interrogations and shield U.S. personnel from being prosecuted for war crimes.

But Bush's former secretary of state, Colin Powell, endorsed efforts to block the president's plan.

Powell lent his support to three Republican senators Thursday saying that Congress must not pass Bush's proposal to redefine U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that sets international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war.

Powell sent a letter to Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., one of the Republican lawmakers seeking limits to legislation on interrogations, in the latest sign of GOP division over White House security.

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," said Powell, who served under Bush and is a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."

Republican dissatisfaction with the administration's security proposals is becoming more prominent as the midterm election season has arrived. The Bush White House wants Congress to approve greater executive power to spy on, imprison and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Leaving his closed-door meeting with the House GOP caucus, Bush said he would "continue to work with members of the Congress to get good legislation."

"I reminded them that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland," he told reporters after the session. Bush was accompanied to the Hill by Vice President Dick Cheney and White House adviser Karl Rove.

In an effort to drum up support for its proposal, the White House released a second letter to lawmakers signed by the military's top uniformed lawyers. Saying they wanted to "clarify" past testimony on Capitol Hill in which they opposed the administration's plan, the service lawyers wrote that they "do not object" to sections of Bush's proposal for the treatment of detainees and found the provisions "helpful."

Two congressional aides who favor McCain's plan said the military lawyers signed that letter after refusing to endorse an earlier one offered by the Pentagon's general counsel, William Haynes, that expressed more forceful support for Bush's plan.

The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Asked if Haynes had encouraged them to write the letter, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "Not that I'm aware of."

At nearly the same time Bush met with House Republicans, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Thursday was asking his panel to finish an alternative to the White House plan to prosecute terror suspects and redefine acts that constitute war crimes.

The White House on Thursday said the alternate approach was unacceptable because it would force the CIA to end a program of using forceful interrogation methods with suspected terrorists.

"The president will not accept something that shuts the program down," presidential spokesman Tony Snow said.

Warner believes the administration proposal would lower the standard for the treatment of prisoners, potentially putting U.S. troops at risk should other countries retaliate.

Two other Republicans — McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina — have joined Warner in opposing Bush's bill.

The administration didn't allow such a direct challenge to pass without criticism. On Wednesday, the White House arranged for a conference call with reporters so National Intelligence Director John Negroponte could argue that Warner's proposal would undermine the nation's ability to interrogate prisoners.

"If this draft legislation were passed in its present form, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency has told me that he did not believe that the (interrogation) program could go forward," Negroponte said.

Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, who supports the administration, said he did not think the Bush plan would endanger U.S. troops because al-Qaida doesn't take prisoners. "The prisoners they do take they behead," he said.

The other bill Bush is pushing would give legal status to the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. It was approved on a party-line vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, but is stalled in the House amid staunch opposition from Democrats and some Republicans concerned that the program violates civil liberties.

With Bush preparing for the House caucus, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Wednesday, "This is a chance for members to ask their questions and express their concerns."

House Republicans have plenty of those, and some aren't shy about sharing them with the president.

One, Rep. Heather Wilson (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., earlier this year confronted Bush over his wiretapping program at a GOP retreat. Now she is the sponsor of a bill embraced by House GOP leaders — but not the White House — that would restrict the domestic surveillance program and step up congressional oversight.

A member of the National Security Council under Bush's father, Wilson is facing a tough election challenge in her home state. A day earlier, Republicans abruptly canceled a scheduled committee vote on her bill that was expected to send it to the floor where the administration would push for amendments.

The atmospherics stand in stark contrast to Bush's visit to the same group in July 2002, amid debate over a trade agreement and brisk legislative momentum for his war on terrorism.

"I talked to them about how pleased I am with the progress we're making," he told reporters after that meeting.

This time, happy talk is hardly on the agenda.

"We hope to hear from the president how urgent it is that we pass measures to fight terrorism before Congress leaves for the November elections," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.



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Bush in bid to twist Republican arms on security By Vicki Allen and Thomas Ferraro

President George W. Bush went to the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to prod fellow Republicans to back his plans to track and try terrorism suspects, but some pushed ahead with a competing measure the White House opposes.

"I reminded them that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland," Bush, accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney, told reporters after privately meeting with Republicans in the House of Representatives.

He did not visit the Senate, where some leading Republicans are backing a competing bill to set up trials for foreign suspects. These Republicans say they are eager to ensure the suspects' legal rights are protected and so fend off any U.S. Supreme Court challenges.

Those challenging Bush include three Republican heavyweights: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The dispute arises as Democrats and Republicans bicker over who can best defend America, their eyes squarely focused on November 7 elections in which the Democrats hope to seize the Senate and House from Republican control.

Democrats have stayed out of the fray, letting the Republicans show their divisions over Bush's handling of suspects scooped up since the September 11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people five years ago.

McCain released a letter from Bush's former secretary of state, Colin Powell, that said the "world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism" and said he opposed Bush's bid to redefine the Geneva Conventions that require humane treatment of prisoners.

Back at the White House, Bush told reporters: "We have proposed legislation that will enable the Central Intelligence Agency to be able to conduct a program to get information from high-value detainees in a lawful way."

DOMESTIC SPYING

Bush also wants the House and Senate to pass legislation effectively backing his warrantless domestic spying program.

A bill backed by Bush to enable a secret court review of his domestic spying program won the approval on Wednesday of a sharply divided U.S. Senate panel.

Republicans hailed the surveillance measure and brushed off Democratic complaints that it could actually further undermine the rights of law-abiding Americans because of what they called loopholes that would expand presidential powers.

The bill would clear the way for a secret court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to examine the constitutionality of the warrantless surveillance program the White House launched after the September 11 attacks. A federal court recently ruled it illegal. Bush has appealed.

The House is still trying to forge a bill of its own before the two chambers try to hammer out a compromise.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said after meeting Bush, "We need to pull together, and we have consistently on the Republican side in the House, to put together the strategies that keep this country safe."

Senators said talks continued with the White House to try to craft a compromise terrorism suspects trial bill.

Administration officials call the Geneva Conventions vague and say they must be clarified to protect CIA interrogators from prosecution and to allow the CIA's "high value terrorist detention" program to continue.

But Warner, McCain and Graham said that would encourage other countries to interpret the protections to meet their own needs, which would backfire on U.S. personnel in future wars.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Richard Cowan, Donna Smith and Joanne Kenen)



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Signs of Fear at the White House
September 14, 2006
By Dave Lindorff

The Bush administration's full-court press against the Constitution is on, with the president getting closer to Senate, and possibly full Congressional approval of his warrantless spying program by the National Security Agency, and with a lobbying campaign on to get his program for kangaroo courts and life-time detention without trial for terror "war" detainees approved by Congress.

It's staggering to see this happening after a federal court just ruled that NSA spying without a show of probable cause is a violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment, and after the US Supreme Court just ruled that Bush was in violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of POWs for refusing to treat the detainees at Guantanamo in accordance with US and International Law.

One might think this to be a case of a powerful president just steamrolling the courts and the Congress, but I think it is not a sign of strength, but rather the desperate act of a man who sees impeachment in his future, and who is acting while he can to try to cover up a few of his crimes.

For while the list of this president's crimes against the Constitution, the Republic and the People of the United States is long and ugly, the truth is that the two areas where he is the most vulnerable to impeachment are precisely the two that he is working so hard now to make go away: the warrantless NSA spying program and the abuse of the detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

This is because the president has already been found, in the first instance by a federal district court judge, and in the second by the full Supreme Court, to be a criminal (if you violate the law, you are by definition a criminal). It's just that as president he cannot simply be indicted and put on trial. That's why we have impeachment.

Bush and his legal adviser, the ethically and morally challenged Attorney General Alberto Golzales, who heads what is still officially called the "Justice" Department, but which has become more of an Enabling Department at this point, both know that if the House of Representatives is captured by the Democrats in November (only 15 seats need to change hands), there almost certainly will be impeachment hearings against the president. They know too that even Republican control of the Senate is at risk, which would make changing laws in his favor impossible.

This means that if they want to change the laws so that the president's crimes against the Constitution can be retroactively made legal, the sleight-of-hand needs to be completed in the next eight weeks, while the Republicans are firmly in charge of both houses of Congress.

Democrats are foolishly allowing this to happen, afraid to look "weak on terror," the charge that was leveled against them in the 2002 and 2204 campaigns. Their strategy, if it even deserves such a weighty characterization, is to lie low, and let Republicans debate among themselves the merits of letting the president spy on Americans at will without first clearing it with a judge, and of letting him institute detention without trial, and trial without the right to face one's accuser and to know the evidence being used to convict.

These are both terrible precedents to be setting, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress all know it. Hundreds of thousands of American patriots have died defending the Bill of Rights, and here we see a craven president, a lock-step Republican Congress and a cowardly Democratic opposition colluding to trash three of those treasured amendments in a flurry of pre-election activity.

The good news is that it probably won't work.

Even if the president succeeds in twisting enough arms to win approval for his kangaroo court at Guantanamo, it will not erase the fact that for five years he has held captives (including children as young as 7!) from the War in Afghanistan and from his program of kidnapping people all around the world in detention without recourse to a legitimate tribunal, and without protection from torture and abuse, all in violation of not only the Geneva Conventions, but of U.S. criminal law. Even if he succeeds in getting the law changed to allow him to spy on Americans without a warrant, Congress has no power to waive the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause before the government can seize property and monitor communications.

Furthermore, there is that huge list of other crimes, ranging from the president's refusal to provide information demanded by Congress and by the 9-11 Commission regarding what the administration knew and did before and during the 9-11 attacks, to his lying about the reasons for invading Iraq and his willful invalidating of over 850 laws or parts of laws passed by Congress (the signing statements).

That said, the Democratic Party is making a huge and historic mistake by urging Congressional Democrats to sit on their hands while Republicans debate these crucial issues, and by having campaigning candidates for Congress duck the issue of President Bush's impeachable crimes. First of all, it is insulting the intelligence of the American voter for Democrats to pretend, as does House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), that impeachment will be "off the table" if Democrats retake the House in November. Of course Democrats will hold impeachment hearings in November; they will have to, if only to challenge the president's claim that he can ignore acts of Congress by issuing "signing statements."

Second, it is simply stupid politics. For over a year, the Democratic leadership has been flailing around trying to find a rallying cry that could energize and excite the Democratic base to increase voter turnout this November. So far this effort has been a dismal failure. Unable to take a stand on Iraq, they have turned to their usual grab-bag of failed "wedge" mini-issues--stem cell research, education funding, gas prices and the like-all to little effect. And yet here's impeachment is staring them in the face. An overwhelming majority of Democrats want this president impeached-for the Iraq War, for defiling the constitution, for messing up in New Orleans, for authorizing torture, and for being a dolt. Polls suggest that a majority of all voters and a sizeable chunk of Republican voters agree, if for different reasons (many genuine conservatives are aghast at the president's trashing of the constitution).

Why don't Democrats just try standing up for a change and make "Impeach the president!" their campaign slogan for the fall? Heck, they could even appropriate Neal Young's song "Let's impeach the President" as a campaign anthem.

While I don't expect to see that happen-Democratic leaders are too afraid of their own shadows-the good news is that Bush has screwed things up so badly, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and here at home, that it may not matter. The Democrats may win back Congress by default. And then I think Bush has it right. He will face impeachment because as cowardly as the Democrats may be, they will have no choice but to do the right thing.

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