Torture Ban Includes a Backdoor

I had a feeling this was the case...

William Fisher of IPS writes:

Bush had previously threatened to veto the bill and Vice President Cheney lobbied hard to change the McCain proposal to give interrogators more flexibility to use a range of extreme tactics on terrorism suspects.

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, made it clear that he would not change a single word in his proposal. The House of Representatives voted 308 to 122 to endorse the measure, which is an amendment to the massive defense spending bill that funds military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The supportive vote in the Senate was 90 to 9.

But in the deal worked out with the president, McCain was willing to add two paragraphs to give civilian interrogators legal protections that are already afforded to military interrogators. This means that civilians would be able to defend their use of interrogation tactics by arguing in court that a "person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful".

At least it'll be in place and can be strengthened when someone less hateful is in power.

The article puts this in as a caveat as if it could actually happen.

However, experts say that if CIA or civilian personnel believe they were being directed to use an interrogation technique that was illegal, they would be obligated to disobey the order.

If anyone were to obey that order they would be removed from their job, and either blacklisted or court martialled. It happened in Iraq, soldiers refused to drive the convoys because of the high risk of getting attacked and possibly killed. Those soldiers were court martialled.

We'll strengthen the bill when the people of this country get Bush out.

The complete article can be found here:
POLITICS-US: Torture Ban May Include a Backdoor