Cheney's dirty secret.

Byline: The Register-Guard

It's little wonder that Vice President Dick Cheney went in secret to deliver a White House plan to make it legal for Central Intelligence Agency employees to torture detainees in U.S. custody.

How could anybody, even the bunker-dwelling Cheney, stand up and argue in public that the Congress of the United States of America should give the president the explicit power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (think spooks, and not the Halloween kind) to abuse and torture prisoners - or hand them over to other governments that would attach the electrodes?

It's hard to think of a better example of moral bankruptcy than Cheney's proposal to weaken a Senate-approved ban on torturing detainees in U.S. custody.

Earlier this month, 90 senators, including 46 Republicans, approved Sen. John McCain's proposal to ban "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment of prisoners held by the military. The Arizona Republican's proposal shouldn't be necessary - torture is already prohibited by U.S. law and by an international treaty that was negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States.

But the Bush administration, in the absence of oversight from an invertebrate post-Sept. 11 Congress, arrogated to itself the authority to mistreat and torture prisoners. It violated the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, as well as decades of U.S. military practice. The result was hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan - and an indelible stain on the nation's reputation.

The U.S. Senate has at long last recognized the need to assert its constitutional authority, and require the humane and civilized treatment of prisoners held by military and intelligence agencies. Yet President Bush has threatened to veto a military appropriations bill - it would be his first veto since entering the White House - containing the anti-torture provision. Now the House should approve the Senate amendment, the president should back off this obscene and revealing veto threat, and Cheney should withdraw his proposal.

The nation - and the world - are watching.