Attention Must Be Paid
The Senate version of the Defense Appropriations Bill, with those onerous prisoner-treatment restrictions the Administration so hates, now goes to conference to smooth out differences with the House version. Here is where any shenanigans will occur. We can assume the House leadership is in the tank for torture and will stack their delegation accordingly. So everything depends on whom the Senate leaders detail to the assignment.
The House rules are vague on how many conferees get appointed by either body, though they state that “A Majority of House conferees and majority of Senate conferees must sign conference report and statement of managers.”
So the Senate has the power to stand up for its declared principles. Its published rules on conference committees are frustratingly vague. But I would think trouble would enter from one of two directions.
First, if the Senate leadership appoints more than one of the Nazgul to the conference committee. Four of the Nazgul are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, but the Chair of that committeee, John Warner, supported/sponsored the McCain amendment on treatment of detainees. Three sit on the Appropriations Committee, including its odious chair, Ted Stevens.
But an overwhelming majority of Senators, including bipartisan majorities on both most relevant committees, supported the McCain Amendment. By right – always a dangerous phrase to invoke when discussing legislative politics – the Senate conference committee should be stacked with amendment supporters. Again, the Senate website was no help to me in figuring out just who will be appointing conferees, so if Loyal Readers can provide authoritative insight I’ll pass it on before Monday, in case anyone wants to make their wishes known.
The other source of danger is Republicans who voted for the Amendment in the Senate roll call caving in conference. Such Senators could find any number of excuses for doing this: White House pressure; the need to “support the troops” by getting their funding passed without holding it up for some pecksniffery about prison camp procedures; the need to “support the troops” by leaving in place a system where it is ONLY those troops, and only the lower-ranked of them, who risk such punishment as does eventually get doled out for war crimes; the notion that the overwhelming bipartisan vote sent message enough to the White House about how the oldest deliberative body in the world feels about the issue of prisoner treatment and that this famously responsive Administration will surely proceed differently now even without law compelling a change in behavior.
There may be Republican Senators who voted for the McCain Amendment for public-relations reasons but who will readily disavow it when the lights dim. More likely there may be some whose vote reflected their sincere, pious wishes, but whose spines won’t bear the load soon to be heaped on them by the President’s men and the House leadership.
So, keep an eye.
Comment by Nell —
October 8, 2005 @ 10:20 am
This is the most useful post on any blog in days. I wrote to Mark Schmitt at his blog to ask about how conferees are chosen. I’ve written to Warner to urge him to put himself on the conference committee (it seems likely he has the seniority and position — chair of Armed Services — to do that). As an original sponsor of the anti-torture amendments, and someone who won’t be up for re-election until 2008 if ever, I believe he’ll have the necessary spine.
Comment by Nell —
October 8, 2005 @ 10:26 am
For readers unfamiliar with the name, Mark Schmitt was on the staff of Sen. Bill Bradley in the 1990s. His blog is The Decembrist, and he also posts at TPMCafe.com.
For all I know he may not look at a computer on weekends, so especially you DC-ites who know Senate staffers: please help!!
Comment by Diana —
October 8, 2005 @ 12:40 pm
Jim,
The President’s men don’t have the same ability to intimidate that they once did. I bet this passes, and sets up the stage for a Hollywood-drama confrontation between Viggo McCain and Sarumen Bush, who will cast his first Presidential veto (in favor of hurting people, what else?).
That’s what I’m praying for anyway.
Sorry for inapposite LoTR analogies. I am not a Tolkienhead.
Comment by Diana —
October 8, 2005 @ 2:35 pm
ps–Check out Phil Carter’s take on this. He doesn’t appear to be as enthusiastic as you with respect to Congress mandating specfic standards of interrogation, likening it to using blunt instruments for brain surgery.
Don’t forget McCain’s motivations. He always wants to look like the saint-warrior/knight in shining armor.
If he ever becomes President, this is worrisome. He’s the warmonger the Sullivan wing can unite behind.
Comment by Nell —
October 8, 2005 @ 5:06 pm
Phil Carter’s response makes my head hurt. This action by Congress shouldn’t be necessary at all, if the military and civilian leadership were doing their job and adhering to the U.S. law implementing the International Convention against torture. Given that they’re not, he seems all too eager to reserve flexibility for the Defense Dept. that they’ve demonstrated clearly they can’t be trusted with.
I understand his concern about seeming to award constitutional protections, although I doubt very much if the specter of Miranda warning etc. is anything but a reduction ad absurdum. And I’d have a lot more respect for that kind of argument from him if he’d shown more willingness to presume innocence in the case of chaplain Yee at Guantanamo. Even after all charges, including the mickey mouse adultery and porn b.s., were dismissed against Yee, Carter was basically saying ”well, he got out of it with fancy lawyering” rather than acknowledging that the Army had been trying to cover their asses for the original, serious, unfounded charges and ill-treatment.
Carter is also restricting his view to the impact on the military, which is his department, but appears to be overlooking entirely the necessity of sending some kind of signal to the world that the American public does not support the flouting of our obligations and (for the most part) traditions.
Trackback by Beautiful Horizons —
October 8, 2005 @ 5:15 pm
Don’t Miss These
Courtesy of Michael Froomkin, please read this column by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald and see just why tossed-off comments by William Bennett are so vicious, so cruel, so thoughtless and so hurtful. Don’t miss Nat Hentoff’s latest Liberty
Pingback by Noli Irritare Leones » Blog Archive » Saturday blogwatch —
October 8, 2005 @ 8:56 pm
[...] Mixed Record. Lee recommends a First Things article on the Sudan. Jim Henley notes that Attention Must Be Paid to where the Defense Appropriations Bill, now containing anti-t [...]
Comment by Steve —
October 8, 2005 @ 10:20 pm
That post on Intel Dump isn’t actually from Phil Carter, who has turned his site into a group blog while he’s on active duty with the 101st Airborne. The post is from a former JAG with a background in military interrogation.
(While I agree that McCain is going to do whatever makes him look good to the DC press, if that’s what it takes to get a respected Republican actively pushing for the Senate to go on the record as saying the military isn’t allowed to torture people, I’ll take it and weep salty tears in 2008 when the McCain/Guiliani campaign storms to victory.)
Trackback by Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life —
October 10, 2005 @ 9:20 am
The Nazgul
Comment by colin roald —
October 10, 2005 @ 1:16 pm
I hate to get sidetracked on an important issue, but on what basis do you claim Congress is an older ”deliberative body” than say the Parliament at Westminster?
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
October 10, 2005 @ 9:29 pm
Strictly speaking, Jim doesn’t necessarily claim that; he only supposed that certain weak minded Senators might believe it.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 10, 2005 @ 9:54 pm
Colin, you’ve got me on that. I had hazily remembered that somehow all the others, even the theoretically older ones, had suffered interruptions in service at some point. But Parliament hasn’t since 1789, I suppose. Not even in 1848. Ah well. My bad.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 11, 2005 @ 12:24 pm
”Again, the Senate website was no help to me in figuring out just who will be appointing conferees, so if Loyal Readers can provide authoritative insight I’ll pass it on before Monday, in case anyone wants to make their wishes known.”
If you get an answer, I’d be curious what it is. It had been my impression that Frist makes such appointments, but that’s only an impression and is easily as incorrect as correct.
That’s fine, although one wonders why one would make inapposite analogies. Presumably Saruman Bush (not actually a plural) used to lead the council of all that is good and just, on the same side as Aragorn McCain, until he fell into the delusion that Good must fail and that he must ally with the Ultimate Evil (on Earth). Who the Real Evil is here, and when did Bush fall, would be an interesting question, if this held any validity as an analogy.
Comment by Thornwood —
October 13, 2005 @ 9:36 am
Just FYI – The McCain amendment was attached to the Senate DoD Appropriations Bill. The Conferees will be from the House and Senate Defense Subcommittees of their respective Appropriations Committees, not the Armed Services Committee(s) (which Warner Chairs on the Senate side).