Sens. John Warner, left, and John McCain have led GOP Senate opposition to the White House bill.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Three Republican senators stepped up their opposition Wednesday to the Bush administration's plan to authorize trials for suspected terrorists, setting up a possible election-year showdown within GOP ranks.
Sen. John Warner said the Armed Services Committee, which he chairs, will meet Thursday morning to craft an alternative bill. The White House believes a reinterpretation of Article III of the Geneva Conventions -- which covers the treatment of people captured out-of-uniform -- are needed to protect CIA interrogators from war-crimes prosecutions. (
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"I'm begging we don't cross that line, because we need not to," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, a judge in the Air Force Reserve.
Sen. John McCain -- a former prisoner of war in the Vietnam War -- released a letter from retired Army Gen. John Vessey in reiterating his opposition to the president's plan. In the letter, Vessey -- chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Reagan administration -- said the measure "would undermine the moral basis which has generally guided our conduct in war throughout our history."
Vessey echoed the dissenting senators in warning that altering U.S. rules on prisoner treatment might subject future U.S. prisoners in other countries and other wars to their captors' whims. Military lawyers also have raised concerns about the administration bill's restrictions on due-process rights for defendants
Warner's move appears to indicate that talks with the administration -- aimed at achieving a unified Republican bill -- have stalled.
The House Armed Services Committee, by a 52-8 vote, sent the administration bill to the full chamber. Its chairman, Rep. Duncan Hunter, told CNN the committee voted against Democratic changes that included "a more liberal package of defendant's rights."
