Words matter. These are the best John Yoo Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush’s 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
If the Court were to extend its reach to the base, judges could begin managing conditions of confinement, interrogation methods, and the use of information.
Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs.
This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.
While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.
Nonetheless, Article 5 makes clear that if an Iraqi civilian who is not a member of the armed forces, has engaged in attacks on Coalition forces, the Geneva Convention permits the use of more coercive interrogation approaches to prevent future attacks.
We can guess that the unacceptable conduct of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib resulted in part from the dangerous state of affairs on the ground in a theater of war.
It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.
Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.
President Bush and his commanders announced early in the conflict that the Conventions applied.
It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists.
That is because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them.
The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.
Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.
