WASHINGTON — President Bush on Friday toughened his stand against rebellious senators in his own party who want to stop his proposal for harsh interrogation of terrorism detainees, warning that the outcome of the debate "really is going to define whether or not we can protect ourselves."
At a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, the president, in animated and unusually forceful language, urged members of Congress to approve his plan for interrogating detainees and trying them before military commissions. He said an intelligence program that had obtained valuable information from terrorists could not continue without the legislation.
Four GOP senators, three of whom have long experience in the military, provided the crucial votes Thursday that blocked Bush's proposal in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Congress has got a decision to make: Do you want the program to go forward, or not?" Bush said. "I strongly recommend that this program go forward in order for us to be able to protect America."
He warned that "time's running out" for Congress to pass his plan before lawmakers adjourn to campaign for the November elections.
Bush's pointed declarations underscored the gap between the White House and the rebelling Republican senators at a time when the GOP hoped to enter the fall election season with a unified position on national security. In particular, Bush's comments emphasized his differences with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam prisoner of war and likely candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, who has opposed Bush's interrogation policy in the past as overly harsh.
McCain and Republicans siding with him said the president's interrogation plan could backfire by prompting other nations to use extreme tactics against captured Americans. "This puts our military personnel and others directly at risk in this and future wars," McCain said in a statement Friday.
McCain was Bush's principal opponent in the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination, but in 2004, the two patched up the political issues that had divided them. Still, McCain is working hard to woo the conservative voters who form the core of Bush's political base, and he may risk alienating those voters by straying from Bush's national security policies.
