De facto admission of Geneva Conventions violations?

Question

This is from a Washington Post article:

"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."

The rest of the article is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14236728/

So whaddya think? It seems to me the thinking here is that if the administration can get the law changed, they can't be charged with crimes of which they know they are currently guilty of committing.

Article dateline is 8 Aug 2006.

Answer 1

We don't need de facto admissions. The Supreme Court has flat out said (a few weeks ago) that the Bush administration has violated Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

And 18 USC 2441 (the statute passed in 1996 that you were referring to) makes violation of those provisions a war crime punishable as a federal criminal violation in the US.

But changing the law doesn't make past violations legal. It just allows the government to further violate the Geneva convention and other ratified international treaties (which have the same effect as federal law under Article VI of the Constitution) in the future without any penalties.

Answer 2

This is old news, the administration has been trying to dodge war crimes prosecution since the start of these wars.. :\

Answer 3

Monkey see monkey do,.,,Tony Blair see what ever Bush do,.., i feel these both animals look like humans
But they are found in field of Oil generating countries along with warfare,.,.,<*~*>,.,,