Despite professing confidence they can compromise, the president's national security aides and holdout Republican senators are not saying how they can reconcile deep differences over limits on CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists.
After a week of public sparring, both sides gave little evidence Sunday of how they might soften their position. As a result, it is unclear if Congress quickly can pass legislation authorizing aggressive methods against terrorist detainees, as President Bush wants.
He says CIA personnel should be able to resume tough interrogation techniques to extract information from detainees. Several senators from his own party are standing in the way, seeking changes. They say the United States must adhere strictly to international standards in the Geneva Conventions and that setting harsher ones could put U.S. troops at risk if they are captured.
"We have to hold the moral high ground," said Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, one of the Republicans not satisfied with the White House proposal. "We don't think al-Qaida will ever observe those conventions, but we're going to be in other wars."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_go_co/congress_terrorism
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