I am glad you took the trouble to post it.
From your link, I found the link to the actual text and it's not pretty.
EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS -- THE ACTUAL TEXT, GIVING THE TERRORIST DETAINEES FULL RIGHTS AND PROTECTION OF THE US CONSTITUTION ANYWHERE, EVEN OUTSIDE THE US AND CREATING US LAW BASED ON THE UN.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:1:./temp/~r109H252jM:e911694:
(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(c) Limitation on Supersedure.--The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this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. "
it reads like a backdoor UN International Criminal Court policy, with the potential to make every US solider or intel operative, a criminal.
Well, now that America has been shown how the sausage is made, anything much less restrictive than this is going to be a hard sell. There's still a gaping loophole in this, known as turning them over to a foreign country with fewer scruples.
H-H-R-L-!-!-!
Now that that's out of the way, this is a horrid idea. I suppose next the Air Force will have to fly the speaker-equipped C-130s around before each battle to announce that this is a raid, and that the troops will have to read the Miranda rights to every POW.
It sounds like the Senate just decided the terrorists have the same rights as anyone else. What next? The answer to that is a right to lawyers and courts. We are one step closer to forcing the military to provide Miranda warnings.
I hope this gets quietly dropped in a Senate/House reconcilliation process.
What are these people thinking?
Unfortunately, if President Bush acts against this amendment, the worldwide headlines will be
BUSH SUPPORTS TORTURE
This meddling by the Senate has really put him in a box. I hate them all. [First time I have ever expressed hate on FR!]
Your headline is misleading. It does not give them the rights you imply. The intent and extent of this, is to simply prohibit mistreatment.
It also, simply affirms that the GCs and UN guidelines already followed are adhered to.
So, reading this and since they qouted the UN document these are no longer US Senators, they are UN Senators.