This letter, from 28 distinguished retired military leaders, was posted on Sen. John McCain's website, dated Oct. 3, 2005.

Dear Senator McCain:

We strongly support your proposed amendments to the Defense Department Authorization bill concerning detainee policy, including requiring all interrogations of detainees in DOD custody to conform to the U.S. Army's Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation (FM 34-52), and prohibiting the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. government agency.

The abuse of prisoners hurts America's cause in the war on terror, endangers U.S. service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations. For many years, those values have been embodied in the Army Field Manual. The Manual applies the wisdom and experience gained by military interrogators in conflicts against both regular and irregular foes. It authorizes techniques that have proven effective in extracting life-saving information from the most hardened enemy prisoners. It also recognizes that torture and cruel treatment are ineffective methods, because they induce prisoners to say what their interrogators want to hear, even if it is not true, while bringing discredit upon the United States.

It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual. Administration officials confused matters further by declaring that U.S. personnel are not bound by longstanding prohibitions of cruel treatment when interrogating non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil. As a result, we suddenly had one set of rules for interrogating prisoners of war, and another for "enemy combatants"; one set for Guantánamo, and another for Iraq; one set for our military, and another for the CIA. Our service members were denied clear guidance, and left to take the blame when things went wrong. They deserve better than that.

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The International Herald Tribune printed the following op-ed by me this morning:

"Oh, beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress

A thorough-fare of freedom beat across the wilderness!

America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

That is the second verse of America the Beautiful. Perhaps it should become the first. In a week in which the Vice President is openly trying to convince a U.S. Senator held captive and tortured by the North Vietnamese that CIA officials should be allowed to abuse detainees as they like, it is worth remembering that the rule of law is not just a "value," much less a luxury confined to more peaceful times. It is both the fundamental safeguard of our liberty and a discipline linked, as the verse says, to our very soul as a nation.

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Purple State argues convincingly for addressing the core issues of humanitarian intervention through a genuine democratic process. Which reminds me to link to an article that Les Gelb and I just published in The Atlantic calling for a return to the constitutionally mandated Congressional declaration of war.

The Washington Post and the New York Times both have editorials today denouncing Vice President Cheney's effort to exempt the CIA from any legal restrictions on how they interrogate detainees. For those of you following this story, don't miss Andrew Sullivan's analysis of how in fact the most recent Pentagon report concludes that virtually all the practices photographed at Abu Ghraib were in fact authorized by the Army field manual, and Marty Lederman's superb analysis of the current state of the law on Balkinization.

My friend David Rieff challenges what he sees as one of the underlying premises of America Abroad. He writes:

 'America Abroad' is to be commended for trying to move the policy debate forward, rather than simply attacking the Bush administration's mishandling of both war and diplomacy. And yet for someone who was once a liberal interventionist but has backed away steadily from that creed since the aftermath of the Kosovo War, it seems to me that a serious debate about what a 'post-Bush' foreign policy (the guiding principle behind 'America Abroad,' as I understand it) needs to do more than presume that the Wilsonian consensus is a given and that the principal problem American forign policy faces is the Bush administration's deformation of the Wilsonian project.

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