Bush accedes to McCain in backing ban on torture

WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday agreed to accept Senator John McCain's bill barring US officials from abusing terrorist suspects, with the White House reversing course after months of resistance when it became clear that its refusal to endorse a torture ban left the president politically isolated.

The agreement brings to an end an extended standoff between Bush and McCain, an Arizona Republican who was Bush's rival for the presidency in 2000. The White House relented under intense pressure from Congress and the international community.

''We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists," McCain said after a meeting with Bush in the Oval Office. ''What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are. And I think that this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror."

Bush agreed to sign a measure outlawing ''cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of detainees anywhere in the world. Military officials will also be required to follow interrogation guidelines codified in the Army's Field Manual, which is being revised to clear up any confusion over which techniques are acceptable.

A McCain aide has said the senator will monitor the revising of the field manual to make sure that the approved techniques are not ''overly aggressive."

The bill closes a legal loophole that the Bush administration opened following the 2001 terrorist attacks. During his confirmation hearing last January, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disclosed that the administration had decided the United Nations Convention Against Torture treaty, which bars cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, has force only on domestic soil.

The new legislation, Bush said, will now ''make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad."

Human rights activists praised the deal yesterday as a ''victory for the rule of law," in the words of Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First. Human rights organizations have decried the CIA's use of interrogation techniques including mock drowning, threatening with dogs, forced nudity, exposure to extreme cold, and shackling in painful positions for long periods.

The bill does not itemize specific practices that would be outlawed, but human rights groups believe it will prevent such tactics.

''For three years now, the administration has been sending the message that cruel and inhuman treatment is OK," Massimino said. ''Now the McCain amendment is going to wipe all of that away. It reminds everybody who's on the front line that the rules are the rules, and if somebody tells you they don't apply, don't listen to them."

Democrats began pushing for legislation banning the harsh treatment of detainees in 2004, after reports of prisoner abuse at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But the bill languished in Congress until the past few months, when McCain began waging a public battle with the White House.

McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp and was tortured by his captors, has long maintained that inflicting pain and fear on prisoners doesn't help extract useful information. He pushed for a formal ban on the practice to improve the nation's image abroad.

Bush and his top aides have said that American officials do not torture prisoners, but also have maintained that CIA officers operating overseas need maximum flexibility to disrupt terrorist plots.

Vice President Dick Cheney made a personal appeal to Republican senators to vote against McCain's amendment. White House officials threatened to veto a bill funding vital Pentagon programs if the prisoner abuse ban were included in it.

But the Senate still voted 90 to 9 in October to tack the ban onto the main defense spending bill, and McCain resisted entreaties from the White House to exempt the CIA from the ban. On Wednesday, after another day of failed talks between McCain and the Bush administration, the House voted 308 to 122 in favor of the McCain amendment, demonstrating that a veto-proof majority for the measure existed in both chambers and that Bush could not stop it.

Still, the president's agreement to sign the bill was applauded by members of both political parties. Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the establishment of clear rules for interrogations will send an important signal that the United States is complying with the Convention Against Torture.

''America's moral black eye is finally healing," Harman said. ''Our troops and intelligence professionals are risking their lives for the ideals we cherish as a nation. Today's agreement upholds those ideals and sends the clear signal that America will never abandon the rule of law."

International pressure had intensified on the Bush administration to formalize its disavowals of torture, particularly following recent disclosures of secretly run CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

Last week, during a visit to Europe, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was dogged by criticism of the US treatment of detainees.

The top House official on defense matters, Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, said he wouldn't sign off on the torture ban unless he gets written assurance from the White House that it won't affect the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities.

But even without that assurance, Senate leaders and McCain have other legislative vehicles with which to pass the torture ban, and they expressed confidence that it would become law.