Soundness on detainees.

DEMOCRATS were happy to let John McCain and a few other Republicans do their dirty work on the issue of interrogation of terrorism detainees. They thought the Arizona Republican would make President Bush bend to what seemed to be his position that no coercive techniques whatsoever should be permitted against detainees. It turns out that that wasn't McCain's position, although he had been happy to let the press and human-rights groups portray it that way and to soak up the resulting adulation. In the end, McCain cut a sensible deal with the White House that will preserve the CIA interrogation program, prompting an overwhelming majority of Democrats to vote against the deal in both the House and the Senate.

The Supreme Court's Hamdan decision saying Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to terrorists, and the McCain Amendment last year banning "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of terror detainees, had threatened to shut down that CIA interrogation program. The program had used coercive techniques, including such methods as placing terrorists in cold cells and "waterboarding" them (i.e., simulating drowning), to extract information that probably couldn't have been obtained through more gentle methods, at least not quickly.

The Bush administration wanted to clarify our obligation under Common Article 3 to keep most of the CIA methods legal. McCain objected to monkeying with the Geneva Conventions. So, instead, the same end will be achieved through clarifying "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 in the U.S. War Crimes Act and having President Bush issue an executive order determining what "non-grave breaches" are. This will preserve most of the CIA program, although perhaps not waterboarding (which walks up to the line of torture, but is also very effective by all accounts).

A great virtue of this compromise is that both political branches have spoken clearly to the issue of interrogating unlawful enemy combatants, and agreed that, while torture must be eschewed, aggressive interrogation is legal and necessary. Critics of the interrogation program can no longer lay it solely on President Bush's doorstep. Now it is just as much the program of Congress and of John McCain.

The other major point of contention was the use of hearsay and classified evidence in military commissions that are trying terrorist suspects. The administration compromised and essentially abandoned its insistence on being able to introduce classified evidence in such a way that only the accused's lawyer, not the accused himself, would see it. Now, instead, detainees will get to know the substance of such evidence, while the sources and methods by which it was gathered will be kept secret. Also, detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be granted access to the U.S. court system, but only in a properly circumscribed way. They get to appeal their detention once to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and appeal any military-commission verdict once to the same court.

All in all, it is a reasonable system for handling terrorist suspects who may have information that will save lives and whose detention is essential to prosecuting the war. That the Democrats found this objectionable, but weren't even willing to air their objections while McCain was grappling with the White House, is another indication of their wrongheadedness and cowardliness on the war.