Bush Administration Plan Would Reduce Prosecutions of War Crimes

[kpete]

War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 9, 2006; A01


The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.

Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture.

more at:
http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2006%2F08%2F08%2FAR2006080801276_pf.html

[Turbineguy]

1. "wearing of women's underwear"?

Republican men would pay to get in!

[enuffs_enuffs]

2. If we could only agree on what...

"cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment"... IS.

What a bunch of shit.

[malaise]

3. Criminals passing laws

to escape punishment. This is frightening.

[Poll_Blind]

4. Unreal. Too late to recommend but I can still give it a KICK! n/t

PB

[Imagevision]

5. Bush himself could be found guilty of war crimes - invading Iraq under

false pretenses, the dude sold us a war/threats that never existed

[InternalDialogue]

6. If we do not hold ourselves to a standard

we know to be virtuous and correct, we fall into the category of those we claim to despise.