the senators screamed torture, torture, more torture - not really but they voted that way. Original Article Nov. 11, 2005, 10:04AM Bill strips detainee rights to court Measure would nullify Supreme Court ruling that allows challenges By ERIC SCHMITT New York Times WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. The vote, 49-42, on an amendment to a military budget bill by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., comes amid intense debate over the government's treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody worldwide and just days after the Senate approved a measure by Sen. John McCain banning their abusive treatment. If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their detentions in court. Nearly 200 of roughly 500 detainees at the prison have already filed habeas motions. As written, the amendment would void any suits pending at the time the law was passed. The vote also came the same week that the Supreme Court announced it would consider the constitutionality of war-crimes trials before President Bush's military commissions for certain detainees at Guantanamo Bay, a case that legal experts said might never be decided by the court if the Graham amendment becomes law. Countermeasure in works Five Democrats joined 44 Republicans in backing the amendment, but the vote Thursday may only be a temporary triumph for Graham. Senate Democrats led by Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico said they would seek another vote, as early as Monday, to gut the part of Graham's measure that bans prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from challenging their incarceration by petitioning in civilian court for a writ of habeas corpus. So it is possible that some lawmakers could ultimately have it both ways, supporting other provisions in Graham's amendment that try to make the military-tribunal process at Guantanamo more accountable to the Senate but opposing the more exceptional element of the legislation that limits the prerogatives of the judiciary. Graham said the measure is necessary to eliminate a blizzard of legal claims from prisoners that is tying up Department of Justice resources and slowing the ability of federal interrogators to glean information from detainees that have been plucked off the battlefields of Afghanistan and elsewhere. "It is not fair to our troops fighting in the war on terror to be sued in every court in the land by our enemies based on every possible complaint," Graham said after the vote. "We have done nothing today but return to the basics of the law of armed conflict where we are dealing with enemy combatants, not common criminals." Opponents of the measure sharply criticized the Senate vote as a grave step backward in the government's treatment of detainees in the global war on terror. "This is not a time to back away from the principles that this country was founded on," Bingaman said. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of four Republicans to vote against the measure, said the Senate was unduly rushing into a major legal shift without enough debate. "I believe the habeas corpus provision needs to be maintained," Specter said. Narrow challenges OK Under Graham's measure, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay would be able to challenge only the narrow question of whether the government followed the procedures established by the secretary of defense at the time the military determined the prisoners' status as an enemy combatant, which is subject to an annual review. Detainees would not be able to challenge the underlying rationale for their detention.