Senate clears $445 billion for defense

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 Senate amendments to restrict the
Pentagon’s interrogations and treatment of military prisoners
and detainees.

Earlier in the week, the Senate bucked a White House veto
threat and overwhelmingly backed an effort 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 voted to clarify the legal status of enemy
combatants at the Guantanamo Bay military prison and increase
congressional oversight of their detention and release.

Under that amendment, President George W. Bush must submit
to Congress procedures for the tribunal on detainee cases and
the review board on detainees’ status. It also bars use of
statements obtained with “undue coercion” when determining
status of a detainee.

Final passage of the defense 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 who chairs the
Armed Services Committee, 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.

In work on the defense bill last week, the Senate added
$3.9 billion in emergency funding for avian flu protection, to
stock up on anti-viral drugs and increase global surveillance
of the disease.