(2006-09-16) — The Senate Armed Services committee this week will consider a bill designed to break the impasse with the Bush administration over the interrogation of terrorist detainees.

The new approach, dubbed ‘Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell’ by supporters, would sidestep thorny questions about compliance with Geneva Convention Common Article III, and “get the Central Intelligence Agency out of the intrusive business of prying into people’s personal lives,” according to the text of the proposed measure.

Four Republican senators on the panel, who have worked to block the president’s request for greater authority to extract intelligence data from terror suspects, are said to be open to considering the new protocol which would also prevent the CIA or the military from violating the separation of church and state.

“A terrorist detainee’s role in Islam’s jihad against the west is an inherently religious topic,” said one unnamed senate aide, “I believe it’s one of the five pillars of Islam. Questions about another human’s religious beliefs are what the Geneva Conventions call ‘outrages upon human dignity’.”

Republican Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham and Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner have indicated they might support such a compromise measure, the source said, “especially if it would improve America’s image among the people who have committed their own lives to our destruction.”

“It would put the burden of moral responsibility on the enemy,” he said. “Ultimately, we believe it will win the hearts and minds of violent Muslim extremists so they will abandon their suicidal obsession with destroying the Great Satan and his minions.”