Several Republicans disagree with Bush's latest legislation

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

 

Senate Panel Rebuffs Bush on Anti-Terror Legislation

By Richard B. Schmitt and Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writers

1:35 PM PDT, September 14, 2006

 

 

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's campaign for tougher legislation on terrorists suffered another blow today when Senate Republicans supported efforts to block his plan to reinterpret Geneva Convention restrictions on the interrogation of prisoners.

 

By a 15-9 vote, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and three other Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the change.

 

The rejection of Bush's plan could create a dramatic clash, particularly among Republicans campaigning for reelection as being strong on security issues, when the full Senate votes next week.

 

Today's vote came several hours after Colin Powell, the secretary of State in Bush's first term, spelled out his position in a letter to Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

 

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell said. "To redefine [a portion of the Geneva Convention] would add to those doubts."

 

More than that, he said, it could lead to the mistreatment of American troops captured in Iraq and elsewhere during the war on terrorism.

 

Powell's letter came as the Senate Armed Services Committee met in closed session to consider Bush's proposal. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.) joined Warner and McCain and all the Democrats on the committee in voting against the proposal.

 

Bush wants the authorization before the trials begin for 14 high-profile terrorists who have been taken to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from CIA prisons worldwide.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the military tribunals that were set up for prosecuting terror suspects needed congressional authorization. Bush does not want the new tribunals to be hamstrung by what the administration describes as the vague protections that the Geneva Convention, adopted shortly after World War II, offers to prisoners of war.

 

Before the Armed Services Committee deliberated, Bush paid a rare visit to Capitol Hill to try to shore up support for two foundering anti-terrorism measures and the Geneva Convention proposal. He also made another trip to allow the continuation of the program of eavesdropping on Americans' international phone calls without warrants.

 

On Wednesday, a divided Senate Judiciary Committee muddied the outlook for an issue that Republicans consider key to the midterm elections when it approved widely divergent bills aimed at overhauling domestic eavesdropping laws.

 

The committee endorsed a White House-backed measure that would give President Bush broad authority for his warrantless wiretapping program. It also approved legislation by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would largely preserve a 1978 law governing domestic spying while making few provisions for new executive powers.

 

While one lawmaker decried the Senate approach as "totally contradictory," the House Judiciary Committee abruptly canceled a vote on its own version of the surveillance reform law amid signs of dissension among Republicans there.

 

The White House said it was confident that lawmakers ultimately would enact the measures Bush was promoting. But the growing disharmony over the president's tribunal plan drew warning shots Wednesday from some administration officials.

 

In a conference call with reporters, John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, warned that if an alternate version of the tribunal bill proposed by McCain passed, the CIA would be forced to shut down its interrogation program.

 

"If it goes forward as proposed, this will not allow for the CIA high-value terrorist detention program to go forward," Negroponte said.

 

The Judiciary Committee's eavesdropping vote was a rare rebuke for an administration that has tested the limits of executive power since Sept. 11.

 

The panel's eight Democrats were joined by two Republicans — Graham and the committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — in approving the Feinstein measure.

 

Specter has been the driving force behind the White House surveillance bill, which he brokered with Vice President Dick Cheney over the summer. But he said he voted for both bills — he had previously been a sponsor of the Feinstein legislation — because each had important attributes.

 

Some members of the panel, however, said the committee was passing the buck by sending multiple and conflicting legislation to the floor. A central premise of the Feinstein legislation was "totally contradictory to legislation we just passed," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). "What kind of message does that send to our colleagues?"

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"Rats fleeing sinking ship" story #98140.