There is now no question that President Bush wants to conduct the war in Iraq with ground rules more becoming a merciless Third World despot.
The White House left no doubt about its indifference to brutality this week when it announced the president would veto the entire $440 billion defense appropriation bill over a Senate amendment outlawing "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody.
Mind you, Bush has yet to veto any legislation. Yet, to retain the right to inflict "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" on Iraq war prisoners and anyone seized as an "enemy combatant," President Bush would unplug the flow of funds to our military forces that he so warmly embraces.
This president truly is detached from reality.
The Senate anti-cruelty amendment vote was a breathtaking 90 to 9, enough to override a veto. Among those appealing for a return to more civilized prisoner treatment were former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Joint Chiefs chairman, retired Gen. John Shalikashvili.
Senators clearly were saying to the president that his word is no longer golden with them. Dare he risk the ultimate rebuke—a veto override?
The world has been revolted and sickened by the conduct of U.S. soldiers and CIA interrogators who've tortured and debased prisoners, and killed several. Support for the war and its pointless ugliness is growing thin.
Slick White House spin won't work anymore. Defense Chief Donald Rumsfeld can no longer blame "rogue" soldiers for prisoner abuses.
The president's demand that Senate restrictions on detainee treatment be removed is proof enough of the commander in chief's message to the chain of command: Geneva Conventions be damned!
A case could be made that this is why President Bush opposed the World Court holding U.S. military personnel criminally responsible. This implies that he knew in advance that forces in Iraq and at the Guantanamo Bay detention center would be given a free hand on the q.t. to rough up prisoners in ways intolerable to civilized nations and abhorrent to other signatories to the Geneva Conventions.
Demanding a free hand in how to treat Muslim prisoners also casts doubts on the sincerity of the diplomatic mission undertaken by longtime Bush spin mistress, Karen Hughes, to persuade Muslim nations that Americans are, as Bush likes to intone, good folks.
With America's reputation already badly tarnished, the president needs to quit bluffing with defense funding, follow the Senate's lead, and do the right thing.
