About friggin' time

In case you've been elsewhere of late, in the second-to-last day of this season's tour of duty, the Supremes put the smackdown on the Executive Branch, and said that the detainees at Guantanamo had rights. Rights to a trial that was an actual trial, whether civilian or military, and not just a bunch of authoritative guys scratching their butts. Rights to be protected under the Geneva Conventions. Unca Dub had maintained all along that these detainees were different than every other prisoner of war b/c, well, b/c they were detainees, not prisoners! And this was a different kind of war! But now he has to play by the rules. If he wants to be inhumane, he's gotta get Congress to back him. That might not be so hard to do, if Bill Frist has any say in it, but it's at least got to be legal.

Who knows what this will really do, except perhaps it signals the beginning of the end of the droit de seigneur mode of this administration. My favorite part is where Tony Snow tries to Snow us into believing this higher standard has really been going on the whole time. ("It is not really a reversal of policy. Humane treatment has always been the standard, and that is something they followed at Guantanamo," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.)

What?. Humane my ass. Didn't I tell you several posts ago that guy would cave? (See "We The People, Inc., part II" below.) I might have forgotten the part about our soldiers wizzing on the Koran, but I did write in "TortoroUS" also below (dang, I'm a prophet!) that Amnesty had decided that the US has been engaging in widespread torture and that only recently was a list of people who have been living at Gtmo for almost 4 years even made public. Let's forget about the degrading and inhumane treatment of prisoners for one second and look at the treatment of their non-criminal families, relative to Geneva.

Art. 32. General principle

In the implementation of this Section, the activities of the High Contracting Parties, of the Parties to the conflict and of the international humanitarian organizations mentioned in the Conventions and in this Protocol shall be prompted mainly by the right of families to know the fate of their relatives.

Four years. Four years.


Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060711/wl_afp/usattacksguantanamo_060711184922;_ylt=Ai0X3t.P6O_tGuG8cDD0YG43NiUi;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
http://www.genevaconventions.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4608949.stm

Wow

Apparently being a lying sack of shit is bad for your health. Ken Lay took a dirtnap.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060705/ts_nm/enron_lay_dc