Salon: The Patriot (John Warner)

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Armed Services chairman John Warner is determined to get to the bottom of the Abu Ghraib scandal -- even if it costs George W. Bush the election.

(snip)

While some of his more outspoken colleagues on the Armed Services panel can be flashy bling-bling, capturing the sound bites, Warner's style is more like a strand of pearls: elegant, polished and deceptively tough. The Navy and Marine Corps veteran doesn't pick many fights, but when he does, it's for what he considers strong principles. Which is why the five-term Republican is potentially more threatening to Bush's effort to tamp down the public outcry over Abu Ghraib -- and to his reelection -- than all of the Democrats on Capitol Hill combined.

What should be most worrisome to Bush, perhaps, is that the last time Warner took on something this big -- a showdown with conservatives in Virginia over the Senate candidacy of Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, darling of the right wing -- he won decisively. "He wants to get out the truth," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a former Army ranger and paratrooper who has been one of the leading critics of the administration on the Armed Services panel. "He knows that if we're going to stand in the world for the rule of law, we're going to have to ourselves stand for the rule of law."

(snip)

Warner's aides from that time, during the Vietnam War, remember little about the war issues he handled. What they do recall vividly is Warner the personality: his stylish European suits; his marriage to one of the country's wealthiest women, banking heir Catherine Mellon; and his commanding yet nurturing manner.

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By then, Warner's marriage to Mellon had ended, but the parting was amicable, no doubt smoothed by a $3 million divorce settlement for Warner. In 1976, Warner married actor Elizabeth Taylor. Two years later, he lost the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate to conservative activist Richard Obenshain. When Obenshain died in a plane crash, leaders of Virginia's Republican Party reluctantly turned to Warner in the general election, expecting that in return he would adhere to conservative orthodoxy. But Warner would frequently disappoint them on such core issues as abortion, taxes and gun control.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/02/john_warner/index.html