Bush Pushes Terror Plan; Powell Objects

Bush Pushes Terror Plan; Powell Objects

By DAVID STOUT | September 14, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — President Bush went to Capitol Hill today to rally Republican support for his anti-terrorism policies, but even as he met with lawmakers, a former member of his cabinet broke with him on a crucial issue.

Mr. Bush said after conferring with Republican House members that he had “reminded them that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland.” As part of his plan, the president wants Congress to enact legislation that would authorize tougher interrogations of suspected terrorists.

And that is what Congress must not do, said Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” Mr. Powell said in a letter to Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the Republicans who differ with Mr. Bush’s policies.

Mr. Powell’s repudiation of the White House’s anti-terrorism approach was both stark and highly unusual for a former cabinet member. In 1980, Cyrus R. Vance resigned as President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state to protest the failed mission to rescue American embassy personnel held hostage in Iran.

President Bush has contended that a section of the Geneva Conventions that applies to the humane treatment of prisoners is too vague, and that Congress should pass a measure redefining the extent of the United States’ compliance with that section, known as Common Article 3.

As part of its push for the legislation, the White House released letters sent to the Senate and House armed services committees by high-ranking military lawyers who said that clarifying the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3 “would be helpful to our fighting men and women at war on behalf of our country.”

Back at the White House after his visit to the Capitol, Mr. Bush said he was seeking “legal clarity,” so that Americans interrogating terrorist suspects would not be vulnerable to charges of mistreatment. “It is very important for the American people to understand that in order to protect this country, we must be able to interrogate people who have information about future attacks,” Mr. Bush said. “And that idea was approved yesterday by a House committee in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion.”

The president was referring to the House Armed Services Committee’s endorsement on Wednesday of a bill in line with what the White House desires. The Senate Armed Services Committee also sent such legislation to the Senate floor, but with competing measures, thereby guaranteeing a vigorous debate.

Mr. Powell, a former four-star Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and had a leadership role in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, said in his letter to Mr. McCain that redefining Common Article 3 would only deepen worldwide doubts about America’s moral stature.

“Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk,” Mr. Powell said in his letter to Mr. McCain, reported this morning by The Associated Press. Critics of the Bush administration approach have argued that, if the United States is seen to be mistreating captives, Americans who are taken prisoner could be subjected to cruelty.

Mr. Powell resigned as secretary of state in November 2004 after it had become widely known that he had had deep misgivings about the Bush administration’s war to topple Saddam Hussein and was tired of repeatedly clashing with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the issue. In recent months, Mr. Powell has been advising Mr. McCain in connection with the senator’s possible presidential candidacy in 2008, according to McCain aides.

In 2002, despite his misgivings about the coming war, Mr. Powell argued the Bush administration’s case before the United Nations, asserting that there was strong evidence that the Baghdad regime had deadly unconventional weapons. When those weapons failed to materialize after Mr. Hussein was deposed, Mr. Powell was said to be hurt and angry.

Mr. Powell’s letter to Mr. McCain was the latest development in a struggle over Mr. Bush’s approach to fighting terrorism, a struggle that also involves how much power government should have to monitor communications, and under what circumstances surveillance can be done without warrants.

Democrats who oppose Mr. Bush’s policies have been strengthened of late by Republican dissenters. Besides Senator McCain, Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina have been prominent Republican opponents of the president’s attempts to authorize harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects. Mr. Warner is chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham, who is an authority on military law, are also members.

Senators McCain, Warner and Graham held a tense half-hour meeting with Vice President Cheney last July in which Mr. Cheney scolded them for proposing legislation that Mr. Cheney said would weaken President Bush’s power to protect Americans. The legislation, sponsored by Mr. McCain, bars cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners in American custody.

“The three of us were firmly of one view, he of another,’’ Mr. Warner said of the meeting.

The Senate and House eventually approved Mr. McCain’s measure by overwhelming margins.