Reuters reports,
The White House on Thursday threatened to veto a massive Senate bill for $442 billion in next year's defense programs if it moves to regulate theYep. That's fighting for freedom and democracy.
Pentagon's treatment of detainees or sets up a commission to investigate operations at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere.
The White House tried to spin this as some how being about the right of the President to set military policy. That would seem to make sense, except the last time I checked the United States Constitution in Article. I, Section 8 specifically gives Congress the power
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;That's right, so despite claims by the White House that Congressional oversight of the military is somehow un-Constitutional are just a bunch of hot air. But then again, it appears no one in the Bush Administration has really read the Constitution. "To provide for" doesn't mean writing a blank check to the President so he can run torture camps.
And dare I say that the White House's claims that prohibiting torture would somehow "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice" and thus endanger the national security of the United States is just laughable? That's right, the same White House that leaked the identity of a CIA agent and took the country to war on forged evidence is all of the sudden concerned with the national security of the United States.
