Mccain, Lieberman Team Up On Detainees

Mar 4, 2010 — Politico

Kasie Hunt

Joe Lieberman is once again endorsing John McCain over Barack Obama – this time on a critical national security issue.

Lieberman and McCain have introduced a bill that would deny Miranda rights to terrorist suspects and block them from the U.S. civil court system.

The bill could interfere with the Obama administration’s efforts to cut a deal with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham to develop a comprehensive system to deal with detainees—an effort that would include some role for federal courts. Graham, a military lawyer and currently serves a colonel in the U.S. Air Force reserves, has been negotiating with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to try and reach a bipartisan deal that could lead to the shutdown of Guantanamo.

McCain and Graham are long time friends, but McCain said “he’s wrong,” when asked about Graham’s belief that civilian courts have a role in trying terrorists.

“And of course I agree with Sen. McCain,” said Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

The McCain-Lieberman bill stakes out tough positions on two Obama administration decisions in the war on terror: reading Miranda rights to the suspected underwear bomber and moving trials for the alleged 9/11 conspirators to New York City. Both have become Republican talking points, as the GOP has tried to paint Obama as softer on terror than the Bush administration.

The legislation “sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected unprivileged enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,” according to a summary of the legislation.

“These are not common criminals. These are war criminals,” Lieberman said. The bill “will once and for all make clear in American law how we should treat people captured in this war.”

It will be tough, however, for McCain and Lieberman to get anywhere with their bill in a Democratic Senate.