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Senate approves $445 billion defense spending

Posted on: Friday, 7 October 2005, 09:34 CDT

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate cleared a $445 billion bill to fund the Pentagon on Friday which includes another $50 billion for the Iraq war, after rebuking the Bush administration for abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

On a unanimous vote, senators sent the defense spending bill to a conference with the House of Representatives where it faces a battle over a Senate amendment to restrict the Pentagon's interrogations and treatment of military prisoners and detainees.

Earlier in the week, the Senate overwhelmingly backed an amendment by Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, to establish the Army field manual as the standard for interrogations and bar cruel and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. military custody.

Senators also unanimously passed an amendment to clarify the legal status of enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay military prison and increase congressional oversight of their detention and release.

Final passage of the bill was delayed a day by an unrelated dispute over a demand by Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, to free up relief money more quickly for victims of the Gulf Coast hurricanes.

The White House, which threatened to veto the must-pass spending bill over the detainee measures, said it will work in the House-Senate conference for a final bill with language more to its liking. It argues the measures would tie its hands in fighting terrorists.

"We will continue to work with congressional leaders as they move forward. This is part of the legislative process, and there is more to go," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Thursday, noting the House version did not include the detainee measures.

But with the Pentagon needing more money by mid-November for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the administration may be quicker to accept restrictions on its detainee policies to avoid holding up the spending bill, several senators said.

The Senate defense bill's $50 billion in emergency funds for the wars brings their costs to more than $350 billion, with most of that spent in Iraq. The administration is expected to seek more war money in February or March next year.

The House bill has $45 billion for the wars, but House members are expected to agree to the higher number.

The Congressional Research Service said the Pentagon was spending a monthly average of $6 billion in Iraq and $1 billion in Afghanistan, with Iraq's average cost up 19 percent from a year ago.

BETTER TREATMENT FOR DETAINEES

Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is a key backer of the detainee amendments. He said the lopsided Senate vote gives lawmakers a strong hand to protect the regulations in negotiations with the House.

"That was an extraordinary vote in the face of the administration's position to the contrary," Warner told reporters on Thursday.

A number of lawmakers have blamed abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other U.S. military prisons on the administration's vague policies coupled with intense pressure on U.S. personnel to extract information from detainees.

They said those abuses, which resulted in a worldwide scandal with published photographs of physical and sexual mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, have damaged the United States' international standing and risk retribution on U.S. soldiers who may be captured in the future.

"We're trying to create certainty from chaos," said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. "The amendments give guidance to our troops to ensure they don't get into legal trouble while detaining and interrogating terrorists."

Source: REUTERS

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