September 06, 2006
Bush Folds on Terrorist Bill of Rights
Okay, I'm ready for impeachment now:
The Bush administration on Wednesday said all detainees of the U.S. military would be ensured humane treatment, but some such as al Qaeda members would have fewer protections than other war prisoners.The Pentagon detailed its policies on prisoner treatment shortly before President Bush was to speak on the issue of detainees on Wednesday afternoon. ABC television reported Bush would announce the transfer of a dozen top terrorism suspects held at secret CIA prisons to Defense Department control.
The Pentagon directive, which gives all prisoners protections as defined by the Geneva Conventions, follows heavy international criticism of the United States over military abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison and over its treatment and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
Let's get a few facts straight about what terrorists are afforded under the Geneva Conventions, starting with the Third Geneva Convention (via Wikipedia):
Article 2 specifies when the parties are bound by GCIII That any armed conflict between two or more "High Contracting Parties" is covered by GCIII; That it applies to occupations of a "High Contracting Party"; That the relationship between the "High Contracting Parties" and a non-signatory, the party will remain bound until the non-signatory no longer acts under the strictures of the convention."
As al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not act "under the strictures of the Convention" by torturing and beheading captives time and again, the rights of the Geneva Convention does not apply to them.
Terrorists are not afforded the protected Prisoners of War status, as they fail to meet the standards in Article 4.1.2:
Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions:
- that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
- that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);
- that of carrying arms openly;
- that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
To be eligible for Geneva Protections, "militias and members of other volunteer corps" must fulfill all of these qualifications; terrorists satisfy none.
Somewhere in North Waziristan, Osama bin Laden just laughed himself to death.
Update: Tammy Bruce seems to be of a like mind, while AllahPundit searches for a silver lining that I hope is actually there.
Update: Okay, I'm an idiot for beleiving this ABC News Report might reflect what the President actually said.
ABC News has learned that President Bush will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It will be the first time the Administration publicly acknowledges the existence of the prisons.
From there, I went on to the Reuters report I cited above with the thought that Bush gave Geneva rights to terrorists. It was the thrust of my entire post.
And I was dead wrong:
The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court's ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes. And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling's potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.Taken as a whole, the President's maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.
It looks like a lot of us might have gotten blindsided by Bush's sudden and uncharacteristic agility. I could get used to being this kind of wrong.
We are going to P.C. ourselves right out of exhistance.
I believe in humane treatement and it should be given where it's due but when we deal with those that cut off the heads of living victoms and revel in it, the gloves should come off.
Posted by: Retired Navy at September 6, 2006 12:51 PMBloggers need to question every article coming from the MSM, especially during the run up to the elections. I now read the transcripts since they are the actual words said, instead of what some leftist reporter heard. Sheesh.
Posted by: Stormy70 at September 6, 2006 04:31 PMIt also means that they can be held in Gitmo for the "duration of hostilities" and no one can say boo about it.
Posted by: Actual at September 6, 2006 06:11 PMIt's a sad day when seemingly intelligent people like yourselves would parse the law to allow a president to defy the very reasons our country broke from Britain: rule of law, protection under the law, protection from despotism.
What Bush has said is this: Yes, we have secret prisons (it's no longer treasonous to talk about them now because we're the ones doing the talking). Yes, we have tortured and will continue to torture (it's OK to talk about this now, too). Yes, we dare our rubber-stamp Republican congress, which is fleeing farther from us with every passing minute, to join us in this horrific folly because it's more important to stick it to the Democrats that to be Christian at heart because that's the right thing to do, legalese aside.
Of course, he's also said to our soldiers: Don't get caught by enemy because, if the terrorists are not party to the Geneva Conventions, there's no reason they shouldn't torture the hell out of you. Of course, some of you will probably say, terrorists would torture anyway so we might as well too. Which would only demonstrate how pathetic you've become.
Posted by: angry young man at September 7, 2006 09:18 AMTurns out, also, that the centerpiece of Bush's speech, his defense of his use of torture because it got a close-mouthed Zubaydah to open up and give up Ramzi bin al Shibh, was a lie.
Spencer Ackerman at The Plank points out:
"First, according to Ron Suskind, Abu Zubaydah didn't clam up because he was "trained to resist interrogation," but because he has the mental capacity of a retarded child. Second, the idea that Abu Zubaydah's interrogation tipped off the U.S. to the existence of Ramzi bin Al Shibh is just an outright lie. A Nexis search for "Ramzi Binalshibh" between September 11, 2001 and March 1, 2002--the U.S. captured Abu Zubaydah in March 2002--turns up 26 hits for The Washington Post alone. Everyone involved in counterterrorism knew who bin Al Shibh was. Now-retired FBI Al Qaeda hunter Dennis Lormel told Congress who Ramzi bin Al Shibh was in February 2002. Abu Zubaydah getting waterboarded and spouting bin Al Shibh's name did not tell us anything we did not already know.
"Of course, most Americans don't have access to Nexis. And most Americans don't remember--and can't be expected to remember--newspaper coverage of Al Qaeda for a seven-month stretch between the attacks and Abu Zubaydah's capture. Bush is exploiting that ignorance to tell the American people an outright lie in order to convince them that we need to torture people. As Bush once said in another context, if this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."
Posted by: angry young man at September 7, 2006 12:17 PM
