Actually, McStain is purporsely interpreting it as something else. He's implying that the president wants to torture prisoners, while the president is looking for better protection from assinine lawsuits in US courts, most of which are likely to rule things like "refusing to give prisoners chocolate ice cream for dessert every Friday night = destroying their human dignity."
As for POWELL....well, he's being Powell. Most likely, McStain put him up to writing that moronic letter. I used to rather vehemently defend Powell's performance in attempting to sell military action in Iraq to the UN Security Circus. Now I think maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe he didn't do anywhere near as good a job as he could have and Old Europe wasn't entirely to blame for the UNSC setup.
I just hope he has some hard news, rather than this internal clash with the Senate Armed Services bunch.
Powell is distracting the press from his involvement in the Plame outing. (the letter worked just fine.)
i know exactly what you mean. I defended him as well, when he was under attack.
I'm beginning to believe, that Bush should have let him go as soon as it became evident he was retaliating for being embarrassed by the Intel.
fist he tried to make it look like the State department intel was right, all along,(which is false) and now all this stuff about Armitage! and statements by Generals who were once under his command, against the premise of the Iraq war.
He has been playing against the admin, even before he left office.
Powell is McCains SecDef.
Just like Clarke will be Hillary's SecDef.