PENTAGON SET TO DROP GENEVA CONVENTION
Geneva Conventions Helped Protect These US Soldiers in WWII
Via the Sydney Morning Herald
THE Pentagon is pushing for its new policy on prisoner detention to omit a key tenet of the Geneva convention that bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," marking a potentially permanent move away from international human rights standards.
Military officials say the decision follows a lengthy debate within the US Department of Defence, but will not become final until the Pentagon makes the new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. . .The process has been beset by controversy and coincides with growing criticism of US detention practices and the conduct of US forces in Iraq.
For decades it was US military policy to follow minimum standards set out in the Geneva conventions for treating prisoners. But in 2002, President George Bush suspended sections of the Geneva conventions for alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
His order superseded military policy in effect at the time, touching off debate over US obligations under the accords that intensified after reports of abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. . . The prisoner directive was due to be released in April with the Army Field Manual on interrogations. These were delayed following objections from other parts of government. The main stumbling block involved common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions, which bans torture and cruel treatment of all prisoners, whether unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war.
Military lawyers and some Pentagon officials wanted the redrawn version of the document to include this provision, but were opposed by the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, government sources said.
Mr Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, and the defence undersecretary for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, argued it would restrict the US's ability to question prisoners.
Senior Pentagon officials believe common Article 3 creates an "unintentional sanctuary" that could allow al-Qaeda members to avoid telling interrogators what they know.
The question occurs: who would Jesus humiliate and degrade? Shall we ask James "Dogbeater" Dobson? Pat "The Assassin" Robertson? Dirty Bush? Dirty Dick?
I'd like to send some of these Bushist sadists to a tropical sanctuary called Gitmo. Makes me want to submit them to humiliating and degrading treatment until they disclose why they lack the capacity to tell right from wrong.
But that would be wrong.
Right?
torture
Pentagon
Iraq War
humiliating and degrading treatment
Bush, Cheney, Rummy
moral bankruptcy
8 comments:
Yeah, it would be wrong. But it wouldn't be wrong to lock them up in jail for the rest of their lives because of their war crimes.
I hope they rot in cells like Milosovich. (When they die, most of the world will probably rejoice, too.)
Yeah, to heck with the Geneva Convention. We'll just start our own Convention...say, "The Waco Convention" or something like that. Everyone can just get together in Waco and George can tell 'em what to do. Gonzalez can be there to personally behead anyone who protests.
Don't these idiots realize that they are setting our troops up for the same kind of treatment in the future? And should this occur, who would be the first to complain?
i've been lurking off and on for a while - find your blog thoughtful and well-written.
i have two concerns:
1) my own nationalistic, patriotic pride tells me that we should be, could be better than we are - and abandoning the geneva convention is beneath us.
2) on a purely self-serving level- if we abandon the geneva convention (though actually we already have) - what happens to our guys when they're captured in a war? of course, there is some concern that taliban, al queda, jihadists, etc. will not abide by the geneva code anyways, and history tells us that the North Vietnamese didn't abide by the GC, so why we should we - which brings me back to my first point -because we should be better. because we should be concerned with our honor and integrity and not someone else's.
It's troubling.
Everything these people do is troubling.
We will never defeat Islamic Fascism by putting ourselves in opposition to the civilized world. Truth is we are in a struggle with the Islamic forces of reaction. But brute force cannot defeat them alone. Strength must be combined with the soft power of justice and decency. To this point we're simply reinforcing all the anti-American stereotypes. In 1989-90 I took my junior year abroad and one break traveled to Poland. A member of Solidarity who was tortured at the hands of the Communists told me that America's ideals, the power of our laws and Constitution was a powerful weapon for dissidents. I was proud of my country hearing that. I'd like to feel that way again.
I'm afraid it's the Bushist fascism that's the real enemy -- the vaunted enemy from within.
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