http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/opinion/14mon1.html

Editorial
Rewriting the Geneva Conventions

Published: August 14, 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.