The Bush Administration was advised by State Department lawyers that the terrorist prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other secret locations overseas would incite a huge backlash from U.S. courts and foreign allies.
Did they listen? Of course not.
The actual goal of these facilities was an even bigger black eye--to create a "lawless universe;" a system where detainees would have no legal rights, and the U.S. courts would have no power to intervene.
Articles of the Geneva Convention are simply a waste of a time to this "John Wayne, go get 'em cowboy" Bush White House.
To simplify this a bit, they where looking for a legal way to commit warcrimes.
A lawyer in the State Department, Bowker was part of a Bush administration "working group" assembled in the panicked aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Its task: figuring out what rights captured foreign fighters and terror suspects were entitled to while in U.S. custody. White House hard-liners, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and his uncompromising lawyer, David Addington, made it clear that there was only one acceptable answer. One day, Bowker recalls, a colleague explained the goal: to "find the legal equivalent of outer space" -- a "lawless" universe. As Bowker understood it, the idea was to create a system where detainees would have no legal rights and U.S courts would have no power to intervene.
This shows a blatant disrespect for all laws, and it also makes conditions for our men and women in the armed services even more dangerous now.
The Bush Administration has basically set the bar that the Geneva Convention is not to be followed, and torture and the taking away of one's rights are acceptable wartime policies. Apparently, to them, decency is just a technicality.
I would not want to be an American POW right now, given the stance we take towards the treatment of our own "prisoners of war". Don't think for a second that any force who's keeping an American soldier captive wouldn't do the same. "An eye for an eye."
Current armed forces members can thank their president and military leadership for the extreme danger they are now being put in if caught.
Tags: [The Gitmo Fallout], [Newsweek], [David Bowker], [Bush administration], [find the legal equivalent of outer space], [lawless universe], [a system where detainees would have no legal rights and U.S courts would have no power to intervene], [Guantanamo Bay], [Geneva Conventions], [jeopardize President George W. Bush's plans to try such prisoners in specially created military courts], [Common Article 3], [in wartime, the president had virtually unlimited powers to defend the nation], [Ahmed Hamdan],
[Uniform Code of Military Justice]
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