Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Bush Forced to Be President for a Day Rather Than Emperor

From the Financial Times:
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that the Pentagon had decided, in a major policy shift, that all detainees held in US military custody around the world are entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.

...Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions – which prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners and requires certain basic legal rights at trial – (will) apply to all detainees held in US military custody.

This reverses the policy outlined by President George W. Bush in 2002 when he decided members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban did not qualify for Geneva protections because the war on terrorism had ushered in a “new paradigm…[that] requires new thinking in the law of war”.
The past several years have seen a steady repudiation of almost every facet of George Bush's foreign policy, and I for one and very, very happy to see this move by the Pentagon. But let's all remember that they only made this move because the Supreme Court forced them to.

It is disgusting, however, that we should ever have had to make this reversal, because we never should have gone down the road President Bush took us with regard to the flagrant flaunting of international commitments like the Geneva Convention and nuclear proliferation agreements.

I love that those evil liberal courts forced the Republic back into balance, if only on this issue.

This is a democracy, Mr. President. Welcome to it.

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