WASHINGTON — After resisting for months, President Bush caved in to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday and said he would accept a formal ban on the cruel or inhumane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.
The agreement represented a rare policy reversal for Bush on his signature issue: his leadership in the battle against terrorism. It followed an unusual rebuke of the president from lawmakers in his own Republican Party, who largely fell in line behind McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war and torture survivor with unassailable authority on the subject.
The White House had resisted a formal ban, arguing that existing law outlawed torture. Bush administration officials also had expressed concern that a ban would undermine U.S. personnel interrogating terrorism suspects, because detainees would fear them less.
But McCain's push for the ban on cruel and inhumane treatment drew overwhelming support from senators and representatives of both parties, who expressed concern that the moral authority of the United States in the rest of the world had eroded as a result of abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and reports of misconduct elsewhere.
McCain argued that Bush's concerns were outweighed by the damage already suffered to the reputation of the U.S. and the increased danger to captured U.S. service members -- who, without a ban in place, would be more likely to face torture at the hands of enemies.
"We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists," McCain said at the conclusion of an Oval Office meeting with Bush in which they sealed the deal. "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."
Originally, the White House, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, had sought an exception from the law for CIA interrogators and other assurances that interrogators would not face prosecution. McCain insisted that no U.S. personnel should be granted immunity from prosecution under amendments attached to military budget measures that must pass the Senate and the House to ensure smooth funding of operations in Iraq.
After weeks of tough negotiations, the president and his top advisors won two concessions from McCain: that interrogators accused of using improper methods could offer as a defense that they were acting on orders that a reasonable person would believe to be lawful, and that the U.S. government would pay their legal fees.
