A few more chickens come home to roost

How’s this for karma being a bitch?

An obscure law approved a decade ago by a Republican-controlled Congress has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of such detainees, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such “protections,” according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield was needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales declined to comment.

The Justice Department’s top legal adviser, Steven Bradbury, separately testified two weeks ago that Congress must give new “definition and certainty” to captors’ risk of prosecution for coercive interrogations that fall short of outright torture.

Language in the administration’s draft, which Bradbury helped prepare in concert with civilian officials at the Defense Department, seeks to protect U.S. personnel by ruling out detainee lawsuits to enforce Geneva protections and by incorporating language making U.S. enforcement of the War Crimes Act subject to U.S. — not foreign — understandings of what the Conventions require.

The aim, Justice Department lawyers say, is also to take advantage of U.S. legal precedents that limit sanctions to conduct that “shocks the conscience.” This phrase allows some consideration by courts of the context in which abusive treatment occurs, such as an urgent need for information, the lawyers say — even though the Geneva prohibitions are absolute.

The Supreme Court, in contrast, has repeatedly said U.S. courts should at least consider foreign interpretations of international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions.

Some human rights groups and independent experts say they oppose undermining the reach of the War Crimes Act, arguing that it deters government misconduct.

They say any step back from the Geneva Conventions could provoke mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel.

They also contend that Bush administration anxieties about prosecutions are overblown and should not be used to gain congressional approval for rough interrogations.

“The military has lived with” the Geneva Conventions provisions “for 50 years and applied them to every conflict, even against irregular forces. Why are we suddenly afraid now about the vagueness of its terms?” asked Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.

Since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the Army has accused hundreds of service members deployed to Iraq of mistreating detainees, and at least 35 detainees have died in military or CIA custody, according to a tally kept by Human Rights First.

The military has asserted these were all aberrant acts by members ignoring their orders.

Defense attorneys for many of those accused of involvement have alleged that their clients were pursuing policies of rough treatment set by officials in Washington.

Links added.

Oh, those quaint Geneva Conventions! Looks like the harder they try to find ways around them, the more obvious it becomes that the entire Bush administration are nothing but war criminals. What was that saying again, about how the higher a monkey climbs, the more it shows its ass? Applies here.

And in case anyone thinks that bad presidential orders don’t have repercussions outside the US, you may want to read this. Israel, taking its cues from its #1 patron, passed an impunity law of its own. After that, what’s to stop the terrorists from just writing the law to suit themselves?

Oh wait. It looks like they already did.

Never mind!