Cheney: Stop defending human rights

OC Register:

Vice President Dick Cheney is leading a high-level White House lobbying effort to block legislation offered by Republican senators that would regulate the detention, treatment and trials of detainees held by the American military.

In an unusual, 30-minute private meeting Thursday night on Capitol Hill, Cheney warned three senior Republican members of the Armed Services Committee that their proposed legislation would interfere with the president's authority and his ability to protect Americans against terrorist attacks.

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 three Republicans are Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman. They have complained that the Pentagon has failed to hold senior defense officials and military officers responsible for the abuses that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, Iraq, and at other detention centers in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan.

There's only one reason you would not want to pass those protections into law, and that is because you are currently doing them or want to do them in the future.