WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday blocked an effort by congressional Democrats to limit interrogation measures used in the fight against terrorism by vetoing an intelligence authorization bill that would have outlawed waterboarding and other harsh methods.
A rare veto in the last year of his two-term presidency, Bush's action was as much a rebuke of Democrats on Capitol Hill as it was a bid to maintain the strong presidential authority to wage war on foreign terrorists that he has asserted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Al Qaeda remains determined to attack America again," Bush said, calling tough interrogation methods "one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror." He added that forcing prisoners to talk was critical, saying "the best source of information about terrorist attacks is the terrorists themselves."
But Democrats and civil liberties groups have argued that techniques such as waterboarding are torture and that the United States should not resort to such inhumane tactics. Even the FBI, which has dispatched agents to the terrorist prison at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sites in the Middle East, has suggested that torture is not needed to make captives cooperate.
Yet Bush critics acknowledge that Democrats probably do not have the votes to override the veto and push ahead with legislation to limit CIA interrogators to the techniques in the Army Field Manual on Interrogation, which prohibits physical force.
"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who cosponsored the legislation. "It drives a wedge between us and our allies, making the war on terror harder to fight. And it makes it more likely our own troops will be abused by future captors."
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said: "The world must know that America does not torture." She cited statements from several dozen current and former U.S. military officials decrying harsh tactics, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq. Petraeus, in a letter last May, said that techniques in the Army manual "work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees."
The bill the president vetoed was the latest scrimmage between the White House and congressional Democrats over the expanded powers Bush has claimed in the wake of the 2001 terrorists attacks.
