A war's `moral basis'

PRESIDENT BUSH MADE FULL USE of the 9/11 anniversary last week. In his speeches and remarks, he reminded the nation of the stakes involved in what he calls the war on terror, and he conveyed a renewed sense of urgency to prevent attacks and bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice. Yet if his goal was also to pressure Congress into acting as a rubber stamp for the administration's questionable legal tactics in conducting this war, it was a disappointing week for the president -- and a heartening one for anyone outside the White House.

On the treatment of detainees, the president has been especially disingenuous. He has never been a fan of international law, so it's absurd for him to pretend to want to "clarify" the Geneva Convention. What he clearly wants to do is gut the treaty's humanitarian protections for wartime detainees, with an eye toward retroactively legitimizing abusive CIA interrogation tactics used on terrorism suspects.

In what has to be considered one of the high points of this so-called war on terror -- if one considers democracy and the rule of law among the prime targets of "terror"-- last week prominent Republicans blocked the White House's cynical move.

Backed by Colin L. Powell, former secretary of State and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four Republican senators -- John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- joined the 11 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee in rejecting the White House's proposal to weaken detainees' protections in the judicial process. Legislation authorizing military tribunals to try terror suspects was mandated by June's Supreme Court ruling invalidating the White House's attempts to create the tribunals, and their rules, on its own.

The committee transcended partisanship to protect not only constitutional norms but the interests of U.S. troops who may be detained overseas in the course of active duty. How would you like to be a prisoner of war in a world in which the U.S. government is encouraging others to "clarify" the Geneva Convention to serve their own purposes?

At issue is the Convention's Common Article 3, drafted in 1949, barring "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." The administration considers this language inconveniently vague and would like to tinker with it to legalize an "alternative set of procedures" employed by CIA operatives in secret facilities.