Bush urges senators to send him detainee bill By Vicki Allen Reuters Thursday, September 28, 2006; 2:06 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On a cliffhanger vote, Senate Republicans on Thursday beat a key challenge to a bill setting rules for interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects shortly after President George W. Bush went to Capitol Hill urging them to deliver the bill.
Voting 51-48, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have restored the rights of foreign suspects deemed as enemy combatants and mostly held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions. That cleared a major hurdle and the Senate was expected to pass the bill later in the day and send it to Bush.
"People shouldn't forget there's still an enemy out there that wants to do harm to the United States, and therefore a lot of my discussion with the members of the Senate was to remind them of this solemn responsibility," Bush said after meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Marking a major win for Bush on a national security issue before the November 7 mid-term election, the House of Representatives passed the bill on detainee treatment on Wednesday.
The bill sets standards for interrogating suspects, but through a complex set of rules that human rights groups said could allow harsh techniques such as sleep deprivation and prolonged time in stress positions.
It establishes military commissions that would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them, and allow limited use of evidence obtained by coercion. The bill also expands the definition of "enemy combatants" to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups.
Backed by Democrats, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania bucked his fellow Republicans and pushed to restore rights of detainees to launch court challenges of their detentions. Four Republicans and one Democrat crossed party lines on the vote.
Specter said the right to challenge one's detention was fundamental in American law, and that the Supreme Court would reject the plan if the right were stripped.
"This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American," said Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's top Democrat. "It is designed to ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power."
Republicans said lawsuit from Guantanamo inmates were clogging the courts and detracted from the war on terrorism.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions said the bill should not "create a long-term battle with the courts over everybody that's being detained. It is a function of the military and the executive branch to conduct a war."
Missouri Sen. Christopher Bond charged there were "partisan efforts to slow the fight against terror."
DEMOCRATS PUSH FOR CHANGES
Republicans also were expected to defeat other challenges from Democrats, who said the bill still fell far short of fair judicial standards and would spark more international outrage at the U.S. treatment of detainees since the September 11 attacks.
If the amendments are defeated, the bill will be sent quickly to Bush for his signature.
Bush said the bill would "give us the capacity to be able to interrogate high-valued detainees and at the same time give us the capacity to try people ... in our military tribunals."
Bush managed to transform a series of setbacks into an apparent victory on an issue Republicans intend to use in campaigns that will determine control of Congress.
The Supreme Court struck down Bush's system of military commissions to try suspects, leaving the process in limbo with no successful prosecutions since the September 11 attacks.
Bush then faced a rebellion in his own ranks over his revised plan that three leading Republican senators contended would allow abusive interrogations and unfair trials.
After a high-stakes negotiation, Bush got most of what he wanted in the bill to continue the once-secret CIA program of aggressive interrogations of suspects that critics said bordered on torture.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan)