The rats are deserting the sinking ship

Looks like Captain Codpiece may not get the absolute dictatorship he wants -- and it's his own team who's going to keep him from getting it:

President Bush and Congressional Republicans spent the last 10 days laying the foundation for a titanic pre-election struggle over national security, and now they have one. But the fight playing out this week on Capitol Hill is not what they had in mind.

Instead of drawing contrasts with Democrats, the president’s call for creating military tribunals to try terror suspects — a key substantive and political component of his fall agenda — has erupted into a remarkably intense clash pitting some of the best-known warriors in the Republican Party against Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership.

At issue are definitions of what is permissible in trials and interrogations that both sides view as central to the character of the nation, the way the United States is perceived abroad and the rules of the game for what Mr. Bush has said will be a multigenerational battle against Islamic terrorists.

Democrats have so far remained on the sidelines, sidestepping Republican efforts to draw them into a fight over Mr. Bush’s leadership on national security heading toward the midterm election. Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s approach.

It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as monumental as the politics.

On one side are the Republican veterans of the uniformed services, arguing that the president’s proposal would effectively gut the nearly 60-year-old Geneva Conventions, sending a dark signal to the rest of the world and leaving United States military without adequate protection against torture and mistreatment.

On the other are the Bush administration and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate who say new tools are urgently needed to pursue and interrogate terror suspects and to protect the covert operatives who play an increasingly important role in chasing them.

McCain's agenda is as clear as day -- he does NOT want to have to run in 2008 on a torture platform, and while he's still willing to have a cuddle puddle with Bush, he doesn't want to be branded in 2008 as "the guy who dismantled the Geneva Conventions," especially since he himself was tortured in Vietnam -- a fact that the Bush campaign didn't hesitate to use to question McCain's sanity in the 2000 primary race.

Warner's and Graham's motivations are somewhat less clear. But for McCain, the stakes are huge. If he can win on this one, not only does he position himself nicely for 2008, but he puts himself in an unusual position of power for the remainder of Bush's term.