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This story is from December 16, 2005
Bush changes tack, backs torture ban
Bush backed Senator John McCain's call for a law banning cruel, inhumane treatment of prisoners in US custody.
WASHINGTON: Under intense bipartisan Congressional pressure, President Bush reversed course on Thursday and reluctantly backed Senator John McCain's call for a law banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in US custody.
A day after the House overwhelmingly endorsed McCain's measure, the White House took a deal that the senator had been offering for weeks as way to end the legislative impasse, essentially giving intelligence operatives the same legal defence afforded military interrogators who are accused of violating the regulations.
For Bush, it was a stinging defeat, considering that his party controls both houses of Congress and both chambers had defied his threatened veto to support McCain's measure resoundingly.
It was a particularly significant setback for vice-president Dick Cheney, who since July has led the administration's fight to defeat the amendment or at least exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from its provisions.
"We've sent a message to the world that the US is not like terrorists," McCain, an Arizona Republican, said as he sat next to Bush in the Oval Office.
"What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behaviour and treatment of all people no matter how evil or bad they are."
Bush sought to make the best of an awkward political situation by inviting McCain, his longtime political rival and the nation's most famous former prisoner of war, to the White House to thank him for a measure that the president had opposed for months as Congressional meddling.
Bush said it was important legislation "to achieve a common objective: that is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture."
Soon after McCain left the White House, Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley said that as a result of the negotiations the law would apply "equally to men and women in uniform and for civilians who are involved in dealing with detainees and interrogations."
NYT News Service
A day after the House overwhelmingly endorsed McCain's measure, the White House took a deal that the senator had been offering for weeks as way to end the legislative impasse, essentially giving intelligence operatives the same legal defence afforded military interrogators who are accused of violating the regulations.
For Bush, it was a stinging defeat, considering that his party controls both houses of Congress and both chambers had defied his threatened veto to support McCain's measure resoundingly.
It was a particularly significant setback for vice-president Dick Cheney, who since July has led the administration's fight to defeat the amendment or at least exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from its provisions.
McCain's measure would establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of prisoners and ban the kind of abusive treatment of prisoners that was revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.
"We've sent a message to the world that the US is not like terrorists," McCain, an Arizona Republican, said as he sat next to Bush in the Oval Office.
"What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behaviour and treatment of all people no matter how evil or bad they are."
Bush sought to make the best of an awkward political situation by inviting McCain, his longtime political rival and the nation's most famous former prisoner of war, to the White House to thank him for a measure that the president had opposed for months as Congressional meddling.
Bush said it was important legislation "to achieve a common objective: that is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture."
Soon after McCain left the White House, Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley said that as a result of the negotiations the law would apply "equally to men and women in uniform and for civilians who are involved in dealing with detainees and interrogations."
NYT News Service
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