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there was this big debate over %uh in early two thousand and two inside the administration over whether
we the president and the executive had to obey the geneva conventions and how it treated these
detainees and partially to avoid prosecution under the war crimes act
the bush eventually declared the geneva conventions simply don't apply to these set of detainees
and they had some reasons for that
the taliban and al qaeda didn't wear uniforms they attacked civilians they didn't have a
normal
hierarchy of command they didn't look like
western
or even just sort of major nation state armies which is well they're not obeying the laws
of war therefore they don't qualify for prisoner-of-war status and they don't qualify for these protections
and that was kind of what everyone was paying attention to at that time
%uh should they be p_o_w_'s or not can a terrorist be a p_o_w_ the same way that
a
captured
you know nazi in world war two was a p_o_w_ but it you know it turns out that it was sort
of a distraction because the real issue was not p_o_w_'s who get this elaborate set of
protections and get to have musical instruments and such that
things that alberto gonzales described as quaint although david addington according to the post actually
wrote that memo to the president but the real question is
a section of the treaty that applies to all prisoners regardless of whether they're
official soldiers or not all wartime prisoners is called common article three
and it says all prisoners must be treated humanely
no prisoners of any type can be tortured
if you're gonna you try prisoners
during wartime they have to receive
a fair trial
and %uh
so by saying that
well they didn't obey the laws of war so they're not pows but then making the leap not
only they're not p_o_w_s but the geneva conventions as a whole just don't apply to them
they sat aside that whole legal regime
and have %uh the the set of prisoners
be sort of subject to
purely to the mercy of executive branch officials and whatever they decided to do with them
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