Abu Ghraib Result of Bush / Gonzales Decision to Ignore Geneva Conventions

[mike_c]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Abu Ghraib Result of Bush / Gonzales Decision to Ignore Geneva Conventions

By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN

A preliminary draft of a soon-to-be published scholarly legal article written by a former military officer who currently presides in a U.S. federal court concludes that the Abu Ghraib prison abuses were the reasonably foreseeable results of a decision by President Bush to ignore the mandates of the Geneva Conventions relating to prisoners of war.

On January 18, 2002, according to the author, Evan J. Wallach, Judge in the U.S. Court of International Trade, President Bush apparently "made a presidential decision that captured members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban were unprotected by the Geneva POW Convention." This decision has never been released by the White House but was referenced in a January 25, 2002 memo by Alberto Gonzales which is currently the subject of much controversy. Gonzales, presently White House counsel, was nominated by Bush to the position of Attorney General after John Ashcroft submitted his resignation. The Gonzales Memo called the Geneva Conventions outdated and quaint and suggested the means by which the White House could avoid applying them.

The United States signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1956. In 1996, Congress passed the War Crimes Act, criminalizing breaches of the Conventions. A "grave breach" of Geneva is a federal crime, punishable by imprisonment "for life or any term of years," and Geneva explicitly states that no nation "bound by the Convention can offer any valid pretext, legal or other, for not respecting the Convention in all its parts."

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[nashville_brook]

1. someone, somewhere HAS to hold the bush crime family

accountable.

and not one of those "accountability moments" shiter referred to.

[LynnTheDem]

2. Of course.

Obviously, if the president of the United States views torture as an ok thing to do, then of course the US military will trickle that down.

And watch the rightwingnuts SCREECH with fury when some hapless US soldier is captured and tortu...I mean captured and made the object of RELEASING STEAM and FUN & GAMES.

Yes it'll suddenly be a whole different kettle of fish when others do it to us. Won't be "fun & games" then. But hey, if torture is good enough for AMERICA to do, it's good enough to do to Americans.