Bush signs new interrogation bill

By Nedra Pickler \nThe Associated Press\n Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects, called the Military Commissions Act, became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.\n"With the bill I'm about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice," Bush said.\nA coalition of religious groups staged a protest against the bill outside the White House, shouting, "Bush is the terrorist" and "Torture is a crime." About 15 of the protesters, standing in a light rain, refused orders to move. Police arrested them one by one.\nAmong those the United States hopes to try are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells.\n"It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives," Bush said. "I have that privilege this morning."\nBush signed the bill in the White House East Room, at a table with a sign positioned on the front that said "Protecting America." He said he signed the bill in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.\n"We will answer brutal murder with patient justice," Bush said. "Those who kill the innocent will be held to account."\nAmong those in the audience were military officers, lawmakers who helped pass the bill and members of Bush's Cabinet.\nHe singled out for praise, among others, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has come under sharp criticism in recent months as violence has soared in Iraq.\nThe law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. Bush said the process is "fair, lawful and necessary."\n"The bill I sign today helps secure this country and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from threats to our freedom," Bush said. "We are as determined today as we were on the morning of September 12, 2001."\nMany Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence. Bush acknowledged that the law came amid dispute.\n"Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated and the questions raised can seem complex," he said. "Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"\nThe American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."\n"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.