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A Challenge to Bush From 3 Republicans Senate 'Triumvirate' Defies Party Lines

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

On a July evening in the Capitol, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned three Republican senators to his ornate office just off the Senate chamber: John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. They were making trouble for the Bush administration, and Cheney let them know it.

The three were pushing for regulations on the U.S. treatment of military prisoners, including a contentious ban on "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." The vice president wanted the provision pulled from a huge military spending bill. The senators would not budge.

"We agreed to disagree," Graham said in an interview last week.

That private session was an early hint of a Republican feud that spilled into the open as Senate Republicans openly challenged President George W. Bush on U.S. military policy in Iraq and the war on terrorism.

In the center of the fray, pushing Congress to reassert itself, were those three Republicans. Though divided on the war, they have much in common: Each is a member of the influential Senate Armed Services Committee, each has a strong maverick streak and each has personal ties to the military. They also have ties to one another.

McCain is the glue that holds them together.

Warner, the committee chairman, who is a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, was secretary of the navy when McCain's father commanded the armed forces in the Pacific and McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. That experience, Warner says, "bonded me with John McCain."

Graham, a former military lawyer, was co-chairman of McCain's 2000 campaign for president in South Carolina and still has bitter memories of the tough tactics used by operatives of Bush, their opponent. Though elected to the Senate on Bush's coattails, Graham has frequently challenged the president, causing him trouble at home. Should McCain make a White House bid in 2008, as is widely expected, Graham says he will be there.

Their relationships with Bush are respectful, though not especially close, and each has his own political agenda. Warner, 78, has few aspirations other than to maintain his status as an elder statesman in the Senate. McCain, 69, covets the White House. And Graham, 50, is still a rising star.

But their "little triumvirate," as Graham calls it, has become a powerful political force at a time when Bush's popularity is sinking and Washington is consumed with debate over the war in Iraq.

On that score, the three are not in lockstep. Last week, Warner prodded the Senate to require the Bush administration to provide Congress with quarterly progress reports on the war. McCain and Graham, who have steadfastly called for more troops, not fewer, voted against Warner's plan, saying it smacked of a timetable for withdrawal.

Yet the three are firm in their conviction that Congress, having ceded authority on military matters to the executive branch, must flex its muscles. And they are united in the belief that U.S. credibility is at stake. In addition to sticking together on the torture ban, despite a White House veto threat, they joined in backing a bipartisan compromise, sponsored by Graham, giving people held as enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, limited rights of appeal in U.S. federal court.

The senators have been united on domestic policy; all three are members of a bipartisan group of 14 senators who struck a deal on Bush's judicial nominees. They trace their alliance on military matters to disclosures last year of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. That scandal prompted Warner to conduct hearings over the objections of some Republicans who said he was handing a political issue to Democrats, a complaint that persists today. Both McCain's torture provision and Graham's measure on legal rights grew out of those hearings.

Graham says he became convinced at that time that Congress needed "a holistic approach" to the delicate issues surrounding those in U.S. custody. McCain says he pressed for the torture provision because "frankly, we never got answers to some of the questions that were asked" about Abu Ghraib. "I think I can help the administration by forcing this through," he said. "I think I can help them more effectively pursue the war on terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular."

Source: International Herald Tribune

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