McCain, Warner, Graham: No Bypassing Torture Ban

In a followup to yesterday's post about the president's decision that he can waive the law banning "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners whenever he feels like it, the amendment's main Senate sponsors issued statements in response. Alone among major papers, the Boston Globe covers the story, with another Charlie Savage piece today.

Senators John McCain and John Warner put out a joint statement Wednesday afternoon saying in part "We believe the president understands Congress's intent in passing, by very large majorities, legislation governing the treatment of detainees. The Congress declined when asked by administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions included in our legislation. Our committee intends through strict oversight to monitor the administration's implementation of the new law." A part of that is very important: part of the "negotiations" between Congress and the White House over the amendment's text dealt with providing a presidential waiver - Congress rejected that. Now this president is just unilaterally reasserting his right to circumvent the law.

Senator Lindsey Graham told the Globe he'd go even further than McCain and Warner did in their statement: "I do not believe that any political figure in the country has the ability to set aside any ... law of armed conflict that we have adopted or treaties that we have ratified. If we go down that road, it will cause great problems for our troops in future conflicts because [nothing] is to prevent other nations' leaders from doing the same." Nothing in there that I would disagree with.

I'm glad that these three senators have made such strong statements on this, and I hope they'll keep it up. I'm not going to let go of this story, and I hope other news outlets start picking up on it as well. This pattern of executive end-runs and disregard for the rule of law has simply got to stop.