One worry addressed
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Foreign Policy, Law, Military, News, The War On Terrorism, WarAnswering one of my worries about the sudden embrace of the Geneva Conventions by the Bush administration, there’s some good news.
But first, some context.
The detainees are not being afforded the full protection that a uniformed soldier would get from the Conventions. What they do get is Article 3, which mandates certain minimum standards that must be applied to everyone, not just signatories or regular soldiers. Detainees shall:
in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever:
* violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
* taking of hostages;
* outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
* the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
That’s it. The last two items are the most important, prohibiting most forms of torture and speaking to the potential legality of Bush’s proposed tribunals.
So with that caveat, we have the following details from the story:
President George W. Bush declared in 2002 that Article 3 did not apply to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, but ordered that they be treated humanely “subject to military necessity.”
It turned out that “military necessity” left the door open for some of the interrogation techniques observed by FBI agents. Which really spells out the difference between voluntarily following the Conventions and being required to follow them.
The Supreme Court ruling overrides that declaration. But there was some ambiguity, as I noted in my initial post on the ruling — notably, whether this would apply to prisoners in nonmilitary facilities.
It does.
The Bush administration said all detainees in its war on terrorism are covered by Article 3, without making any distinction between those in military custody and those in custody of agencies such as the
CIA.
Good. Next step: establishing a fair and reasonably transparent method for detainees to challenge their detention, and coming up with a system for determining how long each will be held. In that way we can move them out of the deservedly embarrassing legal limbo they’ve been living in and back under the rule of law.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 and is filed under Foreign Policy, Law, Military, News, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:44 am
What happens if Hezbollah bombs another US target (remember Beruit)? Would the terrorists be considered illegal combatants or POW’s? Would the bombers deserve full protections of the Geneva Conventions or just common article 3? Who makes that decision?
July 13th, 2006 at 7:46 am
This part that bothers me:
Who gets to decide that? Who sets the standards of “personal dignity” here? Does having women in their presence qualify? And Allah forbid one of them be questioned by a woman, or be subject to her orders!
July 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Well Lonely, I can see why it would be annoying to have to follow all their wishes about whether or not a woman could interrogate them, whether that woman is properly covered etc. There should be some limit on how much can be objected to.
But, as I said before, aside from purely logistical issues, what does “humiliating and degrading treatment” get us? Aside from the fact that it might be fun for the guards to tease and make fun of the detainees, it’s not like these people are going to spill their guts due to too much teasing. Panties on the head and naked pyramids are not going to lead to useful information. In fact, if I were the one being humiliated like that, I would purposely give bad information to jack with the government’s intelligence.
All humiliating and degrading treatment towards the detainees does is make other countries hate us more, and it makes us look like a-holes. Not to mention the fact that we’re setting an environment where people who might have useful information aren’t going to want to come forward with it. If I had information, I would be afraid they would toss me in a cell in Gitmo, and I would probably be lucky not to be beaten and raped.