Restricting the president's ability to conduct the war.Senate Republicans planned to push ahead with legislation regulating the treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody, despite a White House veto threat.
The Bush administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, is working to kill amendments that GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina want to tack onto a bill setting Defense Department policy for next year.
McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, and Graham, a former military lawyer, planned to introduce their amendments this week, said Senate aides who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to let their names be used. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., has been working with McCain and Graham on the legislation.
The aides said the measures have not been toned down even though White House lobbying against them intensified late last week.
Cheney met with the three Republican lawmakers just off the Senate floor for about 30 minutes Thursday evening. That followed an administration statement that President Bush's advisers would recommend a veto of the overall bill if amendments were added that "interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war to answer unnecessary or duplicative inquiry or by restricting the president's ability to conduct the war effectively."
Would be very bad timing for the torture president if those other Abu Ghraib photos were to find their way public, eh?
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