Bush arm-twisted into a torture ban

Dec 16th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

After overwhelming votes in both houses of Congress, President Bush has backed down and agreed to Senator John McCain’s proposed ban on the torture of terrorism detainees by American government personnel. The move shows Mr Bush’s weakening grip on his party and on power

WHO says torture isn’t effective? In recent weeks, senior members of the Bush administration have twisted and writhed, as news reports have revealed painful fact after painful fact about American treatment of detainees. They added up to a clear picture: that American personnel were practising what many considered torture.

Finally, on Thursday December 15th, after resisting for months, the White House accepted the “McCain amendment”, proposed by John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona. The amendment, backed overwhelmingly by votes in both houses of Congress, will ban cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees by any American, civilian or military, anywhere in the world.

Though there had been a steady stream of news and commentary on detainee abuse since Abu Ghraib, the story has flared up particularly brightly in the past six weeks. On November 2nd the Washington Post revealed that the CIA had been running secret prisons—“black sites”—in Europe and Asia, where the highest-value targets in the war on terror were kept and harshly interrogated. George Bush insisted soon after that “we do not torture”. But a follow-up scoop by ABC News found that “waterboarding”, or pouring water over a strapped-down and gagged prisoner to produce a terror of drowning, was one of the CIA’s authorised techniques.

The question of torture dogged most of the administration’s top figures personally. Many (including The Economist) called on Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, to resign after Abu Ghraib. Alberto Gonzales, formerly the White House’s lawyer, was grilled about it when confirmed to his current job as attorney-general. Dick Cheney led the resistance to the McCain amendment, hoping to at least carve out an exception for the CIA. This only reinforced the vice-president’s status as the administration’s top hate-figure for the left, and his approval ratings have been sharply negative, partly as a result.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is far more popular. Before a recent trip to Europe, she gave a speech on detainee practices that seemed to signal a policy shift on abuse—but it was quickly derided as being filled with lawyerly loopholes, and questions about abuse nagged her throughout the subsequent trip. Even Scott McClellan, the president’s press secretary, who is usually considered mild-mannered, has been drawn into angry, voice-raising exchanges with journalists over torture.

Throughout it all, Mr McCain calmly refused to bend to the administration’s attempts to weaken his amendment. There would be no exception for the CIA. Nor would there be a blanket amnesty for any past abuses. But in the end he took one step that gave Mr Bush the final push he needed. Personnel accused of abusing prisoners will be able to defend themselves with the argument that a “reasonable” person would have believed he or she was acting legally. On Thursday, he met Mr Bush in the White House and the two announced the deal. Naturally, Mr McCain claimed it as a victory and a ringing message to the world; Mr Bush just as naturally spun it as a useful clarification of policy.

Mr Bush likes to portray himself as a man of principle who does not bend to polls or political pressure. But Mr McCain’s hand was strengthened by Congress’s overwhelming support. The Senate passed an earlier version of his amendment by 90 votes to 9. And on Wednesday, the House of Representatives backed it by 308 to 122. Both majorities were considerably over the two-thirds threshold that makes an act of Congress veto-proof. Mr Bush, whether by design or not, capitulated on the same day that Iraqis voted to choose a new government, ensuring that the story would not get top billing.

What will the effects of the bill be? In domestic politics, Mr McCain, who was defeated by Mr Bush in a bitter Republican presidential primary in 2000, has been strengthened. He is often talked about as a potential candidate again in 2008, though he will be 72. Though torture is a serious business, he could be forgiven a little personal glee at handing his old rival such a prominent defeat. Mr McCain is often called a Republican maverick who cannot win the conservative base necessary to get the Republican nomination. But the big majorities he won in Congress for his amendment show that Mr Bush and his administration no longer have the lock on the party they once did.

What about intelligence-gathering? Duncan Hunter, the Republican who runs the House Armed Services Committee and often serves as the Pentagon’s man in Congress, said he would block Mr McCain’s proposal unless given a letter that assured him intelligence-gathering would not be harmed. The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, promptly sent just such a letter.
Critics of torture say that it is not only immoral and degrades the torturers as well as the tortured, but produces false confessions and bad intelligence, as the victim will say anything to end his suffering. But the Bush administration’s behaviour showed that it clearly believed otherwise. And, after all, only a few know what secrets Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the planner of the September 11th attacks, and other top terrorists may have coughed up in the secret prisons in which they have been held, waterboarded and interrogated.

Those who defend careful and selective use of torture employ the “ticking time-bomb hypothetical”: surely, they say, it would be ethical to torture one terrorist to stop a nuclear bomb from exploding in Manhattan? The McCain amendment’s victory reflects a different logic: that such a hypothetical case is highly unlikely; and that legalising torture makes it likely it will be used too often, not just in extreme circumstances. Just as bad, by defending torture the Bush administration was undermining the very values it says America stands for.

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