It’s like a convergence of the old guard!
WASHINGTON – Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday endorsed efforts by three Republican senators to block President Bush’s plan to authorize harsh interrogations of terror suspects.
The latest sign of GOP division over White House security policy came in a statement that Powell sent to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the rebellious lawmakers. Powell said that Congress must not pass Bush’s proposal to redefine U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that sets international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war.
Powell and McCain, two guys who have fought the President tooth and nail on significant portions of fighting the Islamists and who have generally endorsed the old ways of letting the Islamists have their way in the Middle East largely unopposed by serious action, have finally come together.
What? Too hard on McCain, am I? Well, folks, I still have not heard McCain seriously condemn those Senators who were comparing our soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to genocidal criminals like Pol Pot and Josef Stalin or accusing them of running rape rooms in Cuba or Iraq. McCain, of all people, should be on the forefront of defining exactly what interrogation techniques should and should not be illegal since the soldiers whom he purports to support will be the ones who will be hurt by his dissembling.
And now he’s found a bosom buddy in Powell, whose advice allowed Saddam Hussein to kill a few thousand more Iraqis, to train more terrorists, and to ignore the international conventions he appears to respect above all.
Anyone truly serious about fighting Islammists ought to rebuke McCain and Powell as strongly as possible and let them know that if they truly want to be involved in this serious national debate, they’re goign to have to bring serious arguments to the table. Their “vanity obstruction” isn’t helping in the least, even if it does put them both back in the headlines.
(h/t: memeorandum)
Senators to challenge Bush plan for terror trials…
A trio of influential Republican senators Thursday plans to challenge President Bush’s proposal to p…
[...] Forceful interrogation needs to force of US law: “”If this draft legislation were passed in its present form, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency has told me that he did not believe that the (interrogation) program could go forward,” [John] Negroponte said.” So now we will go backward. And more on McCain who “purports to support.” And Powell? He’s “on the McCain side of the left.” Try to make sense of that one. [...]