The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.
Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.
What does this mean? Well, the Supreme Court in Hamden basically said that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention pertains to al Qaeda detainees. That means that the U.S. government cannot engage in the degradation of detainees.
Bush’s amendments don’t actually change that Geneva Convention or the requirement that we adhere to it, but they just make it virtually impossible to enforce. In other words, the CIA and military can engage in humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques and — even though it’s counter to international treaty — they can’t be prosecuted for it.
Amygdala sarcastically quips:
Because if American power to engage in forced nakedness of prisoners, to put them on dog leashes and in women’s underwear isn’t preserved, god help the survival of our nation. And its ideals.
If America isn’t about putting people on dog leashes and in women’s underwear, what is it about?
Billmon is exactly right:
This is like letting John Gotti rewrite the RICO statute.