Media Reporting Of Pentagon Announcement On Geneva Conventions All Wrong
Earlier today I posted on the Pentagon's announcement about the Geneva conventions applying to detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In that move I was very critical of this move.
In a subsequent comment to that post I pointed out that I was assuming the Pentagon was announcing that Gitmo detainees were to be granted full POW status under the Geneva conventions. It turns out that this was a wrong assumption on my part:
An image of the full memo is at the link.
All the Pentagon has done with this recent announcement is confirm the fact that the detainees at Gitmo are benefiting from the minimum level of treatment for all detainees in war - POW or not - as required by the Geneva conventions. The Pentagon is not giving the detainees at Gitmo full POW status.
Not even close. Of course, the media was quick to mislead on this in their effort to spin this move as a "defeat" or "change in direction" for the Bush administration instead of what it is: A strong re-iteration of policy already in place.
In a subsequent comment to that post I pointed out that I was assuming the Pentagon was announcing that Gitmo detainees were to be granted full POW status under the Geneva conventions. It turns out that this was a wrong assumption on my part:
The new memorandum about the status of terrorist detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and elsewhere - signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on Friday -- is being widely misreported. The memo, which is reproduced in full below, doesn't say that the terrorists are now POWs under the Geneva Conventions or that they will be afforded the full rights and protections of the Geneva Conventions.
What it does say is that with the exception of the military tribunals tossed out by the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan, the treatment of the terrorist enemy combatants - under the cited Defense Department and Army manuals - is believed to be consistent with Geneva standards. The media hype of this is entirely wrong.
An image of the full memo is at the link.
All the Pentagon has done with this recent announcement is confirm the fact that the detainees at Gitmo are benefiting from the minimum level of treatment for all detainees in war - POW or not - as required by the Geneva conventions. The Pentagon is not giving the detainees at Gitmo full POW status.
Not even close. Of course, the media was quick to mislead on this in their effort to spin this move as a "defeat" or "change in direction" for the Bush administration instead of what it is: A strong re-iteration of policy already in place.
