From Terence Hunt, AP White House Correspondent in an AP article published in Yahoo:

Bush had agreed in February 2002 that al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were not protected by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war because they violated the laws of war themselves.

Say WHAT ?????

Thus spake Dubya (this is from the documents themselves):

Our nation recognises that this new paradigm – ushered in not by us, but by terrorists – requires new thinking in the law of war.

I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time.

This is scary stuff! Very scary. Right down there with the “Patriot” Act. Since when does a President have the legal ability to rescind basic human rights? I don’t care whether it’s war or not. I don’t care how barbarian our “enemy.” We still can be civilized.

Bush and Rumsfeld have both said that the Geneva Conventions do apply in Iraq. And yet Rumsfeld admits to have approving an unspecified number of secret detentions where the International Red Cross was not notified. That’s a Geneva Convention no-no.

From a Justice Department memo dated 01/22/02, written by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee to White House Chief Legal Advisor Alberto Gonzales:

We conclude that neither the federal War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions would apply to the detention conditions of al-Qaeda prisoners.

We also conclude that the president has the plenary constitutional power to suspend our treaty obligations toward Afghanistan during the period of the conflict.

He may exercise that discretion on the basis that Afghanistan was a failed state.

I wonder how we would feel if someone else decided we were a failed state and they could come in, run us over, and ignore the Geneva Conventions as they lock us all up and torture us. Bybee has since become a Federal judge. Isn’t that grand?

Are you scared yet?