The meeting was closed to the press and public. The group has put out no press releases or official statements, but most members are going back to their network of contacts and congressional representatives to lobby against the White House effort to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban on torture.

The low-profile campaign is meant to encourage influential figures reluctant to publicly oppose the Bush administration to weigh in privately with Congress and the White House.

This is a critical week for legislation put forth by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., banning cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of any person in U.S. custody.

It is appended to the Senate versions of both the 2006 defense authorization and appropriations bills. The House of Representatives endorsed no such language and is under pressure from the White House to leave it out as the two bills are discussed in conference.

The White House has threatened to veto any bill containing the McCain language, saying it would "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bringing terrorists to justice."

Human Rights First organized the off-the-record meeting of former officers to bring together vocal supporters of McCain and those who have yet to weigh in publicly. Human Rights First declined to comment for this story, citing the ground rules of the meeting.

The core of the conference - chaired by former U.S. Central Command Chief Gen. Joseph Hoar -- was drawn from 29 retired officers who in October endorsed McCain's amendment. Other attendees included former civilian Pentagon officials and retired politicians, according to people at the meeting.

Hoar declined to speak about Thursday's conference specifically; some of the attendees are still deciding where they stand on the issue and how public they want to be on the matter.

But it is no accident so much public support for McCain comes from former military, Hoar said.

"There's a lot of idealism among people that serve their country this way. You give up an awful lot in your day-to-day life -- the opportunity to do things with family and kids, you move a lot. You've got to believe when a four-star general gets the same amount of money as a newly minted MBA ... there is something more in this than going to work every day," he said. "Most of us who have served ... hold ourselves to a higher level than the community at large."

"We are an enormous power for the good, or we were, and I think we should be," said Retired Marine Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes, who attended the meeting at a hotel in Pentagon City on Dec. 8. "The minute we begin to hack on (prisoners), we begin to lose moral ascendancy."

"Once you get into a fight, a situation where lives are on the line, that noble thought has to be uppermost, because it's common human decency," Haynes said. "If you lose that then you open the door to maltreatment of our own men ... without any argument."

Hoar rejects the Bush administration's argument that new techniques are needed to effectively interrogate al-Qaida members who have read the standard techniques from the Army field manual posted on the Internet.

"It's about us, not about the other guys," said Hoar. "Who are we? Our president speaks with these throwaway lines about democracy and freedom and then we do things like this. It makes no sense to me."

Haynes speaks to the practicality of humane treatment for prisoners. He was the operations officer in the Marines' 28th Regiment that fought for 36 days on Iwo Jima against an enemy as fanatical and committed as any the United States faces now.

In the one month fight for Iwo Jima - the first battle of the war on Japanese soil - the Marines would lose 6,000 men, three times the number of American service members killed in Iraq over three years. Another 19,000 Americans were wounded. The Japanese lost 21,000 killed.

"Early on March 17, 1945, shortly before sunrise, a Japanese soldier walked naked out of his cave and turned himself over to one of the few remaining lieutenants, Lt. Candy Johnson," Haynes told UPI Monday.

Johnson picked up his radio to call his commander to see if they were still taking prisoners. As he did, an unseen Japanese sniper shot Candy in the head. The bullet ricocheted around inside his helmet and dropped out, leaving Candy unharmed.

"He could have shot that prisoner dead, thinking he had set him up to be shot," said Haynes.

But Johnson didn't, and the prisoner turned out to be a Japanese sergeant named Sakai. He was the top-secret code clerk for the Japanese general in charge of the battle on Iwo Jima.

Sakai's first act as a prisoner of war was to help the American company commander clear several caves of Japanese fighters.

"As soon as word got back to upper headquarters he was spirited back to D.C. and he became one of the more valuable prisoners of war," Haynes said. "He had been privy to a good amount of classified places. He knew about Okinawa, on which we were to land in a few days in April."

Haynes rejects the assertion that al-Qaida fighters are more vicious than any previous enemies of the United States.

"The only difference is they don't have uniforms on," said Haynes. "It was absolutely terrible the way they treated people."

As a lieutenant he saw the corpses of two Marines who had been captured by the Japanese on Iwo Jima. The first had every finger and both of his lower arms broken. He doesn't know if this happened before or after the Marine died.

The second "had been used as an ashtray," Haynes said. "I saw his bare chest ... Cigarettes had been snuffed out on it," he said.

The clarity of the rules the Marines were given before the battle counter balanced their horror and their anger.

"You can guess what the troops thought ... You could say, 'I'm gonna shoot every bastard I see.' But we couldn't do it because we were told not to do it," Haynes.

Hoar says the nature of the enemy should not even figure into the question.

"I don't think it makes any difference that they are different because we're not any different. It's about us," he said.

The debate between these officers and the White House hinges on that single concept: whether the fight is to break the spirit of the enemy, or to preserve the American.

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