Bush Memos Show Disgusting Policies Approved and Proposed by Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft: "Bush staked out a hard-line position less than four months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Siding with the Justice Department, Bush in a February 2002 order declared that suspected Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners are not protected under the Geneva Conventions.
Bush ordered that all prisoners be treated humanely and, 'to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity,' in line with the 'principles' of the Geneva Conventions. But at the same time he reserved the right to suspend the conventions 'in this or future conflicts.' Bush said publicly this week that he never ordered torture.
Previous U.S. policy, from Vietnam to the Gulf War, has been to give war prisoners all Geneva Convention protections regardless of whether the conventions applied to them.
... Critics say the idea that a president can suspend the Geneva Conventions and other international and domestic laws implies that the United States can do whatever it wants.
'They're taking the position that summary execution, drawing and quartering, rape and torture are permissible and the only reason we're not doing these things is a discretional, policy judgment by the president that we won't,' said Hurst Hannum, an international law professor at Tufts University in Boston.
Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) wrote to Bush a week before the president issued the February 2002 order, urging Bush to determine that the Geneva Conventions do not apply at all in Afghanistan (news - web sites). That, Ashcroft wrote, 'would provide the highest assurance that no court would subsequently entertain charges that American military officers, intelligence officials or law enforcement officials violated Geneva Convention rules relating to field conduct, detention conduct or interrogation of detainees.'
... Tenet asked Rumsfeld not to give the prisoner a number and to hide him from international Red Cross officials. He became lost in the system for seven months and was not interrogated by CIA or military officials during that time.
In his investigation into the abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba had criticized the CIA practice of maintaining such 'ghost detainees' and called the practice 'deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine and in violation of international law.'
Rumsfeld was asked at a news conference last week, 'How is this case different from what Taguba was talking about, the ghost detainees?'
'It is just different, that's all,' Rumsfeld replied.
'But can you explain how and why?"
"I can't."
- posted by geoff @ #