July 11, 2006
Bush Administration: Guantanamo Detainees Have Geneva Rights
From the Toronto Star:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Tuesday that all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Convention.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defence Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by President George W. Bush.
That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorized by Congress.
The new policy, described in a memo by Deputy Defence Secretary Gordon England, appears to reverse the administration’s earlier insistence that the detainees are not prisoners of war and thus not entitled to the Geneva protections.
Word of the Bush administration’s new stance came as the Senate judiciary committee opened hearings Tuesday on the politically charged issue of how detainees should be tried.
“We’re not going to give the Department of Defence a blank cheque,” Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee chairman, told the hearing.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat, said “kangaroo court procedures” must be changed and any military commissions “should not be set up as a sham.”
“They should be consistent with a high standard of American justice, worth protecting,” Leahy said.
Snow insisted that all U.S. detainees have been treated humanely. Still, he said, “We want to get it right.”
“It’s not really a reversal of policy,” Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision “complex.”
Nice cave-in. What happened to the famous Bush backbone?
Show Comments
They do not have rights under the Geneva Convention. Period.
"Nearly all 200 countries of the world are "signatory" nations, in that they have ratified these conventions."
1. Al Quaeda and other such terrorist proxy groups are not nation-states.
"Later conferences have added provisions prohibiting certain methods of warfare and addressing issues of civil wars."
No desire to "prohibit" certain methods of warfare has been shown. I won't bother with examples, either you know of them or you're too blind to notice.
