www.GovExec.com - Forward Observer: Tortured Logic (11/14/05): "If Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies in the Bush administration manage to kill an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would forbid the CIA or other U.S. government entities from torturing captives, brutal foreign governments will be less inclined than ever to observe the narrow firebreak between life and death when abusing U.S. prisoners."

...

"But the North Koreans and North Vietnamese stopped short of killing their American captives and tried to cover up bruises and other signs of torture before they were freed. The firebreak dug by the fear of international condemnation stayed their hand. But any U.S. government act that exempted the CIA or any other American agency from McCain's anti-torture amendment would almost certainly wipe away restraint while further blackening the United States' image abroad.

The Senate has passed the McCain anti-torture amendment twice, once as part of the fiscal 2006 Defense appropriations bill and again as an addition to the defense authorization bill.

One of McCain's fears is that the House, during a conference with the Senate on the appropriations measure, will strip his amendment on the grounds that it is now in the Senate's defense authorization bill. Then, warn backers of the McCain amendment, the House Republican majority, at the urging of the White House, will keep the defense authorization bill from being passed at all this year."

(Via NervousFishBlog.)