"Nobody Stands in the Way of the Bushies and What They Want: Those Who Stand in the Way Will Be Leveled"

From the South Carolina paper, The State:

LAST THURSDAY, Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to shut down three senators whose efforts were frustrating the White House. Drop your amendment, the three rebels were told, or face a veto — the first veto of President Bush’s tenure.

Who were these three vexing the White House? Not Democrats, but Republicans: John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham. The measure that prompted such indignity in the Bush administration: an amendment requiring that prisoners held by the military during the war on terror be treated in accordance with the Army Field Manual, which had been the tradition.

Never mind tradition. The administration does not want anyone, in the courts on Congress, having any say over how it conducts the war on terror. It has thrown out U.S. standards, and it does not want to be challenged by anyone.

So the administration really might use its first veto to protect its terror policy from Republican-sponsored restrictions? Not likely. Doing so would highlight how out of line the administration’s policies are. This White House is unabashed about a lot of things that would make predecessors cringe, but using its first veto, after almost five years in office, to defend its treatment of detainees would be too much, even for it.

The implausible threat must not have carried much weight; it did not deter the senators. This week the amendment was ready to be added to the defense spending bill — a bill that must be passed at some point. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist set the bill aside for now, before the amendment could be tacked on. It will have to come back up later, after Congress takes its August recess.

Sen. Graham has expressed his objections and questions about inmate detention before, but during this week’s Senate debate, he conveyed new levels of exasperation. “If you know what the rules are about interrogating anybody, come tell me, because I can’t figure it out.”

The issue of detention is especially important to Sen. Graham because he is a reserve officer in the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General corps. JAG officers have been vocal opponents of the changes in detention rules, but mostly in private. This month, Sen. Graham took those objections public, adding to the Congressional Record memos from JAGs to their service chiefs that the administration’s policies were not on solid legal ground. A Marine JAG officer raised the specter that military personnel could be charged with crimes in other countries for following the administration’s policies on interrogation.

There's much more. Go read it.