Senate Republicans Beat Key Challenge To Torture Bill (Vicki Allen)

  By Vicki Allen

  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On a cliffhanger vote, Senate Republicans Thursday beat a key challenge to a bill setting rules for interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects shortly after President George W. Bush went to Capitol Hill urging them to deliver the bill.

  Voting 51-48, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have restored the rights of foreign suspects deemed as enemy combatants and mostly held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions. That cleared a major hurdle and the Senate was expected to pass the bill later in the day and send it to Bush.

  "This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American," said Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat. "It is designed to ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power." 

  Marking a major win for Bush on a national security issue before the Nov. 7 mid-term election, the House of Representatives passed the bill on detainee treatment Wednesday.

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