When the torture bill was being considered, several Demoocrats tried to force it to at least be
honest, if it couldn't be right. Ted Kennedy, co-sponsored by Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein introduced an amendment "[t]o provide for the protection of United States persons in the implementation of treaty obligations." This would add some text to the bill saying that the US demands that our citizens be treated humanely by other nations. The Senate Republicans voted it down. Following is the entire text which would have been added:
(2) PROTECTION OF UNITED STATES PERSONS.--The Secretary of State shall notify other parties to the Geneva Conventions that--
(A) the United States has historically interpreted the law of war and the Geneva Conventions, including in particular common Article 3, to prohibit a wide variety of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of members of the United States Armed Forces and United States citizens;
(B) during and following previous armed conflicts, the United States Government has prosecuted persons for engaging in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, including the use of waterboarding techniques, stress positions, including prolonged standing, the use of extreme temperatures, beatings, sleep deprivation, and other similar acts;
(C) this Act and the amendments made by this Act preserve the capacity of the United States to prosecute nationals of enemy powers for engaging in acts against members of the United States Armed Forces and United States citizens that have been prosecuted by the United States as war crimes in the past; and
(D) should any United States person to whom the Geneva Conventions apply be subjected to any of the following acts, the United States would consider such act to constitute a punishable offense under common Article 3 and would act accordingly. Such acts, each of which is prohibited by the Army Field Manual include forcing the person to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; applying beatings, electric shocks, burns, or other forms of physical pain to the person; waterboarding the person; using dogs on the person; inducing hypothermia or heat injury in the person; conducting a mock execution of the person; and depriving the person of necessary food, water, or medical care.
It's pretty obvious why the Republicans voted against this; it would have made it clear that by passing this act, they were forfeiting Americans' ability to remain free from torture by our enemies. It wouldn't have changed the effect of the law, but it would made it obvious that the law is a shameful one. And so, in order to prevent their facade from being damaged, the Republicans voted against demanding that the Geneva conventions be applied to us. They saw that stripping foreigners' protections against torture would necessarily strip our protections against torture, and decided that that was a price they were willing to pay.
The final vote was 46-53. The only Republicans voting in favor of the Kennedy Amendment were Chafee and Specter. The only Democrat voting against was Ben Nelson (Snowe wasn't in attendance that day).