In Reversal, President Bush backs Torture Ban

On Thursday President Bush met with Senator John McCain to show that he now supports a ban on torture, even though the administration had opposed McCain's position for months as President Bush had actually threatened to veto the Amendment. However, with overwhelming majorities backing a ban on torture in both the House and Senate, Bush's veto would not have killed the action. Therefore, it is not that surprising that Bush is now supporting McCain's efforts. If Bush would have vetoed the Amendment, it would have been his first, and would have looked pretty bad after Congress would have had the votes to override his veto. You can read more about this issue from the Washington Post:

President Bush reversed position yesterday and endorsed a torture ban crafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after months of White House attempts to weaken the measure, which would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.
The announcement of a deal at the White House yesterday was a setback for the administration, which had pressed the senator to either drop the measure or modify it so that interrogators, especially with the CIA, would have the flexibility to use a range of extreme tactics on terrorism suspects. In the end, McCain, bolstered by strong support in both houses of Congress, was willing to add only two paragraphs that would give civilian interrogators legal protections that are already afforded to military interrogators.

Click here to read the full article from the Washington Post.

Click here to read an article from Newsweek on the same topic.

--Tom Hayes