White House, McCain Reach Deal On Terror Suspect Torture Policy

WASHINGTON – President Bush reversed course on Thursday and accepted Senator McCain’s call for a law banning cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror.Mr. Bush said the agreement will “make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad.”“It’s a done deal,” said Mr. McCain, talking to reporters in a driving rain outside the White House after he met with the president.Under the deal, CIA interrogators would be given the same legal rights as currently guaranteed members of the military who are accused of breaking interrogation guidelines. Those rules say the accused can defend themselves by arguing it was reasonable for them to believe they were obeying a legal order. The government also would provide counsel for accused interrogators.“We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists,” Mr. McCain said earlier as he sat next to Mr. Bush in the Oval Office. “We have no grief for them, but what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are. And I think this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror.”Still holding out was Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He said he would hold up completion of one of the two bills that includes the ban unless he got White House assurances that the new rules would still allow “the same high level of effective intelligence gathering” as under current procedures.But officials said the ban would remain intact in the other bill, the final defense spending measure.The White House at one point threatened a veto if the ban was included in legislation sent to the president’s desk, and Vice President Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to all Republican senators to give an exemption to the CIA.But congressional sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the ban, and Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot who was held and tortured for five and a half years in Vietnam, adopted the issue.The Republican maverick and the administration have been negotiating for weeks in search of a compromise, but it became increasingly clear that he, not the administration, had the votes in Congress.

White House, McCain Reach Deal On Terror Suspect Torture Policy

White House, McCain Reach Deal On Terror Suspect Torture Policy

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