Rewriting the Geneva Conventions

The New York Times | Editorial

Monday 14 August 2006

In January 2002, when the Bush administration created the camp at Guantánamo Bay for prisoners from the war in Afghanistan, President Bush said he would be "adhering to the spirit of the Geneva Convention" in handling the detainees.

Unfortunately, like many of the things the administration said about Guantánamo Bay, this was not true. The president did not intend to follow the Geneva Conventions, and in some vital respects, he still doesn't, despite a Supreme Court ruling that the prisoners merit those protections.

To everyone's relief, the White House is now working with Congress on one major violation of the conventions found by the court - the military tribunals Mr. Bush invented for Guantánamo Bay. But the president remains determined to have his way on the other big issue - how jailers treat prisoners.

He wants Congress to make the United States the first country to repudiate the language of the Geneva Conventions. The only discernible reason is to allow interrogators - intelligence agents and private contractors - to continue abusive practices plainly banned by the conventions and to make sure they cannot be held accountable.

The Bush administration objects to the clause in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions that prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

This standard has been followed for more than a half-century by almost 190 countries, including the United States. The War Crimes Act of 1996, passed by a Republican Congress, makes it a felony to violate the Geneva Conventions. But the Bush administration authorized techniques to handle and interrogate prisoners that clearly break the rules - like prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures, long periods in stress positions, strapping prisoners to metal contraptions and force-feeding them.

The rational response to the court's decision would be to ban those practices and bring America in line with the rest of the civilized world. But that's not how this administration works. It asked Congress to change the law - to amend the War Crimes Act to redefine the standards of Common Article 3.

The White House wants to apply an American legal principle, used to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment, that bars treatment that "shocks the conscience." Mr. Bush wants Americans to believe that the language in Common Article 3 is too vague and makes fighting terrorism impossible.

In fact, the Geneva standard is more specific than the shocks-the-conscience standard. And a vast majority of Guantánamo inmates are not terrorists. In fact, many do not appear guilty of anything, not even fighting United States troops in Afghanistan.

The administration's real aim is to keep on using abusive interrogation techniques at the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency. And it wants to make interrogators - and those who give their orders - immune from prosecution.

Finally, the administration wants Congress to ban the use of the Geneva Conventions as the direct or indirect basis for a legal case in American courts. This would seal off the route that a prisoner used in the case on which the Supreme Court ruled in June.

The Geneva Conventions protect Americans. If this country changes the rules, it's changing the rules for Americans taken prisoner abroad. That is far too high a price to pay so this administration can hang on to its misbegotten policies.