The Bush administration’s insistence that it cannot continue with its secret prisons unless it re-writes detainee protections in the Geneva Conventions has run into Republicans, who correctly believe the administration’s program, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, would cause the world to “doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

The political fight will first take place in Washington, where a plan by the president would try 14 CIA detainees – including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad – in a process that violates many of the standards of justice the Supreme Court described in its rejection of administration practices through Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The Bush plan would allow evidence obtained through torture, evidence the accused would not have access to beforehand, hearsay accounts and tightly limited appeals.

Much improved legislation that takes into account the court’s decision was offered by Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Republican Susan Collins and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee joined them this week in supporting an alternative.

“In crafting legislation creating military tribunals and establishing the rules for trying detainees, we need to stay true to American values,” Sen. Collins said yesterday. “It is a fundamental principle of American jurisprudence, and indeed of all fair judicial systems, that an individual facing the death penalty has the right to see the evidence being used against him.”

In the full Senate, they will find other Republicans on their side, including Sen. Olympia Snowe, which should provide enough votes to send the Warner version of the legislation to conference with the House, where it again meets the president’s version, which the House GOP essentially rubber-stamped.

This will become an important fight over whether the nation will give in to fear to protect itself, knowing, according to Sen. McCain, that coerced evidence isn’t reliable. Or whether it will abide by long-standing human-rights treaties that protect everyone, including Americans who depend on it in wartime.

President Bush has been calling senators over to the White House and visiting Congress to try to pick up votes. Much like the anti-torture legislation by Sen. McCain earlier this year, the danger is not that senators will flip on their positions but compromise away the difference between the two bills and endanger lives as a result.

This is a time for an apparent majority of the Senate to hold firm and make clear to the conference that it will not support a watered-down version of their legislation.