A "compromise" that makes things worse.

The Bush administration-backed bill to create special military tribunals for terrorist suspects would permit the detention and "coercive interrogation"--that is, torture--of noncombatants, including U.S. citizens, who allegedly "supported hostilities" against the United States. This is a much broader definition than a previous version, in which those liable to such treatment must be accused of engaging in hostilities against the U.S. government.

"We're making sure that an enemy combatant can be defined as something other than a front-line troop," explains Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of three Senate Republican "dissidents"--the others being John Warner of Virginia and Arizona's John McCain--who had initially opposed the administration's bill. As paraphrased in a Reuters account, Senator Graham's understanding is that "enemy combatants would now include those who provided money, weapons, and other support for terrorist groups as well as those involved in actual operations." The category would also include "those fighting a U.S. ally," a provision that, given realities in the Middle East, would apply primarily to those taking up arms against Israel.

Although Graham insists that the bill wouldn't permit the designation of U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, other legal analysts point out that by targeting those accused of supporting hostilities, the measure could apply to attorneys who represent terrorist suspects, as well as anti-war activists of various kinds.

Significantly, during a December 2004 hearing before U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green, the Bush administration argued that a "little old lady in Switzerland" or an English tutor from London could be held as an "enemy combatant" if they were accused of materially aiding terrorism--the former through charitable donations that ended up in al-Qaeda's hands, the latter by offering English lessons to suspected terrorists.