President Bush's nominee for the second-ranking spot at the Justice Department shed new light Tuesday on the 2002 development of the administration's positions on the treatment of terrorism detainees, but characterized some of the legal conclusions as "sophomoric."

This bill includes important funding for our troops and their families and for the nation's defense, but most Americans have heard about only one small portion of the statute, one dealing with the handling of terrorism detainees.

The largest trial in Egypt since the 1981 trials surrounding the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, it was a landmark case in the topics of extraordinary rendition and the credibility of the testimony of terrorism detainees.

The recent fissures over terrorism detainees and how far to go in changing immigration law are just the latest and most public examples of serious policy differences among Republicans.

A1 Proposal for Terror Suspects A White House proposal on terrorism detainees would allow hearsay evidence unless it was deemed "unreliable" and would permit defendants to be excluded from their own proceedings if necessary to protect national security.

The Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general found last year that the some aspects of the agency's treatment of terrorism detainees might constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as the international Convention Against Torture defines it.

The military bill is tied up in a fight over the treatment of terrorism detainees, a subject being negotiated between Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and the White House.

This stern indictment should lead the department to change its policies for handling terrorism detainees, and it should cause Congress to end its timidity in exercising its oversight of antiterrorism practices.

At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration did not have an established infrastructure or legal framework for handling terrorism detainees.

They said the department had often pushed the limits on legal interpretations involving issues like the treatment of terrorism detainees and surveillance.