US: President George Bush has defended his strategy for dealing with foreign terrorist suspects in the face of a Republican revolt over proposals to allow harsh interrogation techniques and to withhold evidence from suspects put on trial.
Talking to reporters at the White House a day after the senate Armed Services Committee approved a Bill that rejects the president's proposals, Mr Bush said that America's safety could depend on the outcome of the senate debate.
"As we work with the international community to defeat the terrorists and extremists, to provide an alternative to their hateful ideology, we must also provide our military and intelligence professionals with the tools they need to protect our country from another attack. And the reason they need those tools is because the enemy wants to attack us again," he said.
Mr Bush wants to give CIA interrogators powers and protections from prosecution that fall outside Geneva Convention rules for treating so-called unlawful enemy combatants.
Four Republicans joined 11 Democrats on the senate committee to back a Bill that would amend the War Crimes Act of 1996, which was intended to uphold the Geneva Conventions, by listing serious violations of the treaty, including interrogation techniques considered "cruel, unusual or inhumane" under the US constitution.
The Bill, which has the support of Republican senators John McCain, John Warner and Lindsay Graham, all military veterans, would ban the conviction of accused combatants using evidence they do not see.
Mr Bush said the senate Bill would threaten the CIA's detention programme which has seen almost 100 suspects held and interrogated, sometimes harshly, at secret prisons outside the US.
"Were it not for this programme, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else, this programme has saved innocent lives. In other words, it's vital," he said.
Mr Bush became animated as he rejected a charge by former secretary of state Colin Powell that the US risked losing the moral high ground in its fight against terrorism if it reinterpreted the Geneva conventions to allow for cruel treatment of detainees.
"It's unacceptable to think there's any kind of comparison between the behaviour of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective," the president said.
Democrats rejected Mr Bush's claim that the debate over how to treat detainees would define whether the US would be able to protect itself.
"When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is," said New York senator Chuck Schumer.
The Republican rebels believe they have enough support in the senate to block Mr Bush's proposals, but they do not have enough support to ensure that their own Bill is passed.
