'Unilateral Disarmament' (McCain's "Terrorist Protection Bill")
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1542642/posts
Podhoretz's phrase--"a form of unilateral disarmament . . . in the face of a still intransigent enemy"--is an apt description of the McCain amendment, which will certainly not prompt any reciprocal moves by terrorists to abjure tactics like beheading civilians or flying planes into buildings.
Here is the text of McCain's Terrorist protection bill, placing terrorists captured and held ANYWHERE under the protection of the US CONSTITUTION, that they try to destroy and protecting them even from "degrading" treatment. They can murder us, but we can't even put panties on their heads.
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SEC. __. UNIFORM STANDARDS FOR THE INTERROGATION OF PERSONS UNDER THE DETENTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
(a) IN GENERAL.--No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
(b) APPLICABILITY.--Subsection (a) shall not apply to with respect to any person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense pursuant to a criminal law or immigration law of the United States.
(c) CONSTRUCTION.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the rights under the United States Constitution of any person in the custody or under the physical jurisdiction of the United States.
SEC. __. PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
(a) In General.--No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
(b) Construction.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.
(c) Limitation on Supersedure.--The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.
(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.--In this section, the term ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r109:FLD001:S11062 (click on S1162)
John McCain: U.S. Still Torturing Terrorists
NewsMax ^ | December 8, 2005 | Carl Limbacher
Posted on 12/08/2005 12:37:35 PM EST by Kaslin
Sen. John McCain claimed Wednesday that the U.S. is still torturing terrorist detainees, even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits with European leaders to assure them that the practice is banned under U.S. law.
"We've got to stop this torture," McCain told radio host Don Imus.
"If you torture somebody, they're going to tell you what they think you want to know in order to make the pain stop," he complained.
The Republican maverick said the U.S. can't win the propaganda war "if people believe throughout the world that you are practicing cruel, inhuman, degrading mistreatment or torture on the people that you capture."
"Right now," McCain complained, "we have prisons, apparently, set up in different places in the world where we're keeping people for years."
His comments come as Dr. Rice meets with European leaders to assure them that claims about ongoing torture are baseless.
"The United States does not condone torture," she told a German audience on Tuesday. "It is against U.S. law to be involved in torture or conspiracy to commit torture. And it is also against U.S. international obligations and the President has made it very clear that U.S. personnel will operate within U.S. law and within our international obligations."
Rice also indicated, however, that interrogations conducted in the foreign prisons referenced by McCain have been productive, telling reporters, "The intelligence we gathered has helped to stop terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives in Europe - as well as in the United States and other countries."