George Bush has run into powerful opposition to his plans for interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects. Even more galling for the US president, these opponents are his very own Republicans.
The Democrats, relegated to the role of bemused bystanders, are seeing a trio of powerful Republicans, as well as several distinguished former generals, do their work for them.
Senator John McCain, the Republican favourite for the 2008 presidential race, has gone out on limb by saying that he will not back down even if that costs him the presidency. Backing him are John Warner and Lindsey Graham.
The crux of the disagreement between these high profile rebels and the administration, is whether CIA interrogators should abide strictly by Article 3 of the Geneva convention that forbids torture and calls for the use of proper courts.
The administration's legislation would allow "tougher interrogations" of suspected terrorists and the use of military commissions relying on classified information not shared with the suspects, Mr McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, thinks the US should stick to the Geneva conventions and put forward his own bill.
In an embarrassing defeat for the administration, the Senate armed services committee voted 15 to 9 to endorse Mr McCain's alternative bill. Besides undermining Bush's "war on terror", this is hardly the united front the Republicans wanted to put up before the November mid-term elections, where the Democrats hope to recapture both houses of Congress.
Mr McCain and the generals who stood up to the White House argued that to water down the Geneva convention not only puts US forces at risk, but also undermines America's moral authority.
That authority looks pretty threadbare after Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and secret CIA prisons. But quite apart from the moral issue of torture, administration officials should also question the efficacy of torture in extracting information, something which has been raised by US interrogators themselves. The information gained under torture is often unreliable, as victims may blurt out anything to stop the pain.
Interrogators also argue that humane treatment is often more effective. This week provided a classic example of the effectiveness of such an approach. The BBC programme Turning the Terrorists by Peter Taylor, who has been investigating al-Qaida for years, featured an Indonesian Islamist "supergrass", Nasir Abbas. He willingly provided a wealth of information to the authorities, without being tortured. The information was invaluable and led to many arrests of militants.
Taylor's point was that sometimes a more nuanced and subtle approach to the enemy can be highly rewarding. It is a point the Bush administration has trouble grasping.
