The Bush Administration answered the mandate imposed by
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the recent case in which the Court invalidated the special military tribunals established to try detainees on account of insufficient procedural safeguards, as the Administration announced the Geneva Conventions will dictate the requisite process detainees are afforded. In today's Washington Post, Fred Barbash's
article, "Detainees to Get Protections Under Geneva Conventions" provides further insight. I would note, however, that the "apparent policy reversal" Barbash speaks of does not reflect a discretionary decision, but rather a mandate of Article 3, as interpreted by Hamdan.
In a
previous article responding to the
Hamdan decision, I noted that at least one well-known media outlet misrepresented the Geneva Convention issue as one of the principal points of contention among the Justices. Incidentally, the Defense Department conceded the point in the first paragraph of a related July 7, 2006
memorandum.
Here's an excerpt from Barbash's article:
The Bush administration, in an apparent policy reversal sparked by a recent Supreme Court ruling, said today it will extend the guarantees of humane treatment specified by the Geneva Conventions to detainees in the war on terrorism.
In a memo released by the Pentagon this morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, citing the Supreme Court's decision, ordered all Pentagon personnel to "adhere to these standards" and to "promptly review" all policies and practices "to ensure that they comply with the standards" of the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 3.
Since 2001, the administration has argued that the Geneva Conventions would be respected as a matter of policy but that they did not apply by law to detainees in the war on terrorism who are held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or in U.S. military custody elsewhere. The Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, rejected that view last month in the case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , ruling that a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo could not be tried by a special military commission established by the Bush administration. The court decided that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.
...
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said procedures need to be established to determine appropriate evidence and spell out defendants' rights. "There are many, many questions which have to be answered," he said. He told the hearing, "We're not going to give the Department of Defense a blank check."
The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, recalled that in November and December 2001, the committee had urged Bush to "work with us to construct a just system of special military commissions." But he said the administration instead "chose to go it alone" and "made a mistake of historic and constitutional proportions" by deciding "not to follow the law," notably the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.
The Administration's compelled concession that Article 3 applies to the treatment of Gitmo detainees comes more than a year-and-a-half after FBI allegations of abuse became
public