Well, we already knew that the Bush administration and congressional republicans have been working feverishly ever since
Hamdan to change the
War Crimes Act of 1996, so as to immunize themselves against future prosecution for war crimes, and probably so as to generally protect their policies and their legacy. Been diaried
here,
here, and most recently
here - among a slew of other diaries actually. A report today on
NPR's All Things Considered confirms all this, but adds a new twist: apparently Bushco is trying to make sure that nobody will be able to litigate on the basis of the Geneva Conventions in the U.S. court system. More below the flip.
The report, by legal affairs correspondent Ari Shapiro, is based on a "private" White House document which NPR has somehow obtained. There doesn't appear to be a transcript up of this; the following is what I'm gleaning from the audio. We begin with the intro by the moderator:
A private White House documents sets out the Administration's position on two war time controversies. One has to do with detainees, the other with Americans accused of war crimes. This draft legislation is not yet public. NPR has obtained a copy, and NPR's Ari Shapiro has our report.
Here comes Ari:
One paragraph in this proposal would affect any detainee who comes before a U.S. court. The draft legislation says noone can invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights in any court of the United States.
The doc goes on to state that the government's obligations under the Conventions remain unchanged. It's just that you can't hold them to it in court. Ari:
Human Rights First attorney Avi Cover says that could pull the rug out from under many of the detainees whose cases are in civilian courts right now.
I'm guessing that Avi Cover might be this guy. He has the following sound bite:
What this is saying is that an individual whose rights or protection under the Geneva Conventions have been violated would no longer have a remedy in court.
We then get John Yoo, of Berkeley's Law Faculty, chiming in on behalf of Bushco (Yoo worked for the DoJ for a spell, after clerking for Clarence Thomas). Yoo claims that Hamdan newly created the possibility for the Geneva Conventions to be enforced in court:
Before Hamdan no federal court had ever held that the Geneva Conventions could be enfored by our enemies in our own courts against us.
Of course, Yoo neglects to mention here that almost the sole purpose of the War Crimes Act of 1996 was precisely to make war crimes as defined by the Geneva Conventions actionable under U.S. Code.
Shapiro's report then goes on to discuss the other major topic of the WH document, namely to remove "humiliating and degrading treatment" from the War Crimes Act so as to protect the non-military thugs involved in torture in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere and of cours Bushco itself from prosecution. This fits in very closely with what other sources have been reporting, as recently diaried here, here, and here.
What's confusing about this is that NPR is presenting this as a two-part document, of which only the second part concerns the War Crimes Act. It seems rather obvious to me that what the first part of this document is talking about is nothing short of undoing the central point of the War Crimes Act: the enforcability of the Geneva Conventions under U.S. law.