Someone explain this to me...

According to an article in the New York Times, Dick Cheney and the White House are attempting to block a Republican sponsored bill that would regulate treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, in response (in part) to Abu Ghraib.

According to the article: The legislation, which is still being drafted, includes provisions to bar the military from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross; prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees; and use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new Army field manual.

The justification of course, as has become the mantra of this Administration, is that this would hinder the President's ability to wage the war on terror, the same argument we get for throwing away some of our civil liberties with the Patriot Act.

It would seem that this Administration doesn't grasp that our core principles really aren't worth fighting for, if in the process we erode them down to a shell of their former selves.

We've been assured before by the Administration that it doesn't practice any of the tactics which would be proscribed under the legislation being offered, so why the objection? If you don't do it anyway, it doesn't harm you. If you ARE doing it and lying about it, you're making us all look bad.

So, can someone explain to me what in the proposed measures is so wrongheaded that the Vice President has hinted its inclusion might lead the President to veto the $422 billion Pentagon authorization for 2006 to which it is likely to be attached?

Liam.