McCain, Cheney feud on torture

Senator pushing for blanket ban Washington seeks CIA exemption

WASHINGTON— A leading Republican senator is vowing to go “ as far as necessary” in his fight with U. S. Vice-President Dick Cheney over a White House bid to exempt the CIA from a ban on the use of torture by American captors.

Yesterday, John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he will continue to push for the blanket torture ban because the United States’ reputation worldwide has suffered badly.

“ One of the reasons for it is the perception that we abuse people that we take captive,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

“ How many people turn against the United States of America when they hear that we are torturing people?

“ It’s not about them. It’s about us and what kind of country we are.” The torture ban was approved 90 to 9 as part of a defence bill passed by the Senate last month after McCain inserted the antitorture amendment as part of the legislation. But its final fate is uncertain. A similar bill in the House of Representatives contains no such measure and U. S. President George W. Bush has vowed to use his first veto in five years to kill any bill which includes a torture ban. The White House dirty work has fallen to Cheney, dubbed the “ vice- president for torture” by The Washington Post, who is lobbying Republican lawmakers to allow the CIA exemption. The White House argument is that extreme coercive measures should be available if a terrorist in captivity has knowledge of an imminent attack on the U.S. homeland. An example often used is a case in which American intelligence agents know a dirty bomb is set to explode in a U. S. city in 24 hours, but the city is unknown.

Should the CIA be able to do everything it can to have the captive reveal the city? Opponents of the exemption go beyond the moral arguments, also asserting that torture elicits no usable information and most often simply turns the detainee more fiercely defiant in the face of the captor.