Isikoff, Michael. “Double Standards? a Justice Department Memo Proposes That the United States Hold Others Accountable for International Laws on Detainees – But That Washington Did Not Have to Follow Them Itself.” Newsweek 21 May 2004. 24 Mar. 2008 <http://www.texscience.org/reform/torture/>.
In a crucial memo written four months after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Justice Department lawyers advised that President George W. Bush and the U.S. military did not have to comply with any international laws in the handling of detainees in the war on terrorism. It was that conclusion, say some critics, that laid the groundwork for aggressive interrogation techniques that led to the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The draft memo, which drew sharp protest from the State Department, argued that the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to any Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters being flown to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because Afghanistan was a “failed state” whose militia did not have any status under international treaties.
But the Jan. 9, 2002 memo, written by Justice lawyers John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty, went far beyond that conclusion, explicitly arguing that no international laws – including the normally observed laws of war – applied to the United States at all because they did not have any status under federal law.
This gets into the specifics of maybe how “clearance” to implement aggressive interrogation techniques could have led to the abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib. This gives an explicit fact that the United States found itself exempt from the Geneva Conventions when dealing with the Taliban and Al Qaeda because Afghanistan was a failed state, therefore it did not qualify to be dealt with under international treaties.
It mentions the memo drew protest from the State Department, I am wondering what the State Department did about it and why they objected to the interpretation of international law. Was it because they knew the US would not be able to get away with it unscathed?
I will use these sources to exemplify the fact that the Bush Administration did all it could to find loopholes in the Geneva Conventions. I will use excerpts from the actual Geneva documents and then have this source communicate with it (or another primary source like the memo itself) to address the issue of the United States deciding the international law does not apply to them in this case.
After concluding that the laws of war did not apply to the conduct of the U.S. military, the memo argued that President Bush could still put Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters on trial as war criminals for violating those same laws. While acknowledging that this may seem “at first glance, counter-intuitive,” the memo states this is a product of the president’s constitutional authority “to prosecute the war effectively.”
I will use this as a way to make a claim about the illegitimacy of what the United States is doing by rejecting the international laws of war when it applies to its own conduct but it insists Al Qaeda and the Taliban have to abide by those laws. This article points this out as a double standard, which is true and it is something I intend to address in my paper.
What all of these memos also indicate to me is the gross abuse of executive power practiced by the Bush administration. What is the role impeachment could play in opening dialogue about U.S. torture practices????