Retired FBI whistleblower, Coleen Rowley post this on her website last night.
her opponate, Rep John Kline is co-sponsering Bush's bill.
Coleen's website if you care to donate is
http://www.coleenrowley.com/index.php (we need to find out and support current Senators and Reps, and candidates who are speaking out, it isn't like the media is going to report it)
A Missed Opportunity for Accountability
(The following was co-authored by Coleen Rowley and David Bailey)
After an all-day meeting with Dick Cheney yesterday, Republican Senators McCain, Graham and Warner emerged to proclaim that they had reached a compromise with the administration on military tribunals and interrogation tactics. McCain expressed "no doubt that the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved," and Graham insisted it will "take off the table things that are not within American values."
They should know better.
Of the three major flaws in the bill Bush originally presented to Congress, only one has been removed: suspects will have the right to examine the evidence against them, subject to existing rules designed to protect national security. Protection against arbitrary and indefinite incarceration was not part of Bush's proposal, nor is it in the compromise bill. And despite powerful rhetoric about "the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions," Bush got his way on that as well. Abuses which were never under discussion --- murder, mutilation and rape, for example --- are now explicitly prohibited; otherwise the President decides what can happen. In other words, this bill would explicitly allow the interrogation practices used at Abu Ghraib, so long as George Bush approved them.
As a 24-year veteran of the FBI, I know that using rough interrogation tactics to overbear a suspect's will is not only wrong ethically, it is ineffective. Subjecting someone to pain and humiliation doesn't compel them to tell the truth; it compels them to say whatever will make the pain stop. This generates bad intelligence. Moreover, when we undercut the Geneva Conventions, we eliminate any motivation for our enemies to treat our captured soldiers humanely. Our goal must be to first disrupt, then detain, interrogate, and prosecute those who would do us harm while remaining true to the rule of law and the principles which have served our country well for more than two centuries. Effective interrogation and intelligence-gathering is not at odds with established legal principles as Bush and Cheney would like us to believe. This is why the FBI forbids the use of torture and rough interrogation methods (like waterboarding), as does the Army Field Manual and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
In more than five years since 9/11, Bush's military tribunals have not tried, much less convicted anyone of acts of terrorism against the United States. It is well past time to try those in custody, punish the guilty, and release the innocent. The existing framework for military tribunals is sufficient to this task. But Bush's goal is neither justice nor security; it is power. This bill was clearly introduced as a political ploy in an election year. High political drama you might say when, whatever legislation eventually emerges, Bush can always "interpret" it to his liking via a presidential signing statement, as he has done nearly 1000 times during his presidency. Among these, the most notable was the Detainee Treatment Act --- the last bill on which McCain, Graham and Warner appeared to stand up to Bush.
But now these Senators have decided to compromise, to support legislation which trusts George Bush to do the right thing. Under any other president, this might be acceptable. But George Bush has led this country into war under false pretenses, put incompetent political appointees in charge of rebuilding Iraq, and used the war as a vehicle to transfer billions of American tax dollars to his corporate cronies with no oversight. George Bush is the man who gave us Abu Ghraib. And he has repeatedly demonstrated that he is willing to trade our American values for two more years in power. Yet instead of exercising their Constitutionally-mandated oversight, this Republican-led Congress, and especially my opponent in November's election, John Kline, has chosen to trust in Bush again and again and again.
Enough is enough. Voters need to hold the GOP lapdogs accountable for their weakness in November, so that a Democrat-led Congress can spend the next two years demanding accountability from George W. Bush.
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