Bush to Maneuver Around Supreme Court Decision Adhering to Geneva Conventions

Or so he thinks. The Congress would be very unwise, indeed, to find themselves complicit in war crimes.

Bush to Maneuver Around Supreme Court Decision Adhering to Geneva Conventions:

Top White House officials took a harder line yesterday on a new system to try terrorism suspects, telling Republican senators that President Bush will soon formally propose a tribunal structure with only minor changes from the military commissions that were ruled unconstitutional last month.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley met with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), offering views on a new tribunal structure that they said could pass constitutional muster with a Supreme Court that rebuked the White House in June. The senators said Bush will give Congress a proposal soon.

But Senate Republican aides familiar with the discussion said that the White House position has hardened since a White House meeting earlier this month, when Hadley assured the same senators the White House could accept tribunals based largely on existing military law, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That could place Bush on a collision course with the Senate, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers is preparing legislation that would hew closely to military law in outlining more rights for defendants than the administration wants to grant.

'They prefer starting with the commissions as currently structured, and adding a few changes,' said a senior Senate Republican aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no proposal has been formalized. 'Clearly, some [senators] believe that we have to take more from the UCMJ than the administration, at this time, wants.'