GENEVA LIKELY TO BE SET ASIDE IN US ARMY FIELD MANUAL

If, as seem likely, the Pentagon’s soon to be released army field manual undercuts elements of the Geneva Conventions on the interrogation and treatment of detainees the United States will once again be condemned internationally, leaving the impression that the Bush administration has scant regard for international law.

Such a move by the Pentagon will come as no surprise to JAGs – judge advocates general – whose efforts to force the Bush administration to fall into line with the Geneva guidelines have been consistently thwarted. JAGs have made it clear to the Justice Department that any retreat from the Geneva Conventions represents a step backward for the US in its international defense of the rights of prisoners and weakens the very structure of our legal system.

The latest information leaking from Washington is that the new army field manual will permit, in direct contravention of the Geneva rules, the humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners within its interrogation rules. Sources close to the Defense Department have acknowledged that the State Department tried to prevent elements of Geneva from being excluded from the field manual’s interrogation techniques but failed because Vice-president Dick Cheney used his powerful place in the Bush administration to argue that interrogators need more flexibility.
In the background, it is believed the vice president has also fought for the CIA and other clandestine groupings to be accorded even greater freedom in their choice of interrogation techniques and that process has been augmented by the CIA’s rendition policy that allows for suspects to be kidnapped and transferred to countries like Sudan, Jordan, Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia where torture is routinely used. That range of options regarding interrogation also includes the CIA’s secret interrogation facilities in countries like Bulgaria, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia.

All of this flies in the face of decades of US military commitment to Geneva which appeared to end abruptly in 2002 when President Bush set aside a common article (3) of the Conventions which banned inhumane and degrading treatment for prisoners of war and unlawful combatants. Instead, the Department of Defense instituted Directive 2310 that made it clear captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not entitled to the protection of Article 3. When elements of the US military and JAGs tried to have the common article reinstated in the DOD policy directive their views were set aside by Dick Cheney and intelligence departments of the Pentagon. They won the day by arguing that Article 3 hampered US interrogators.
The soon to be completed army field manual has been a Pentagon project for just over a year and was considered essential after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Members of Congress had hoped to see it some months ago but the military held off sending to them it while the Pentagon debated whether to classify sections of the manual to prevent a public debate on its interrogation guidelines. Earlier this year, selected members of Congress who viewed Pentagon drafts of proposed rules on the interrogation and treatment of suspects demanded changes to parts of the manual that appeared to permit the use of questionable techniques in respect of terror suspects and what were loosely termed unlawful combatants. No decision has yet been taken on whether to allow public access to the manual when it is finally released.
Irrespective of whether the new army guidelines do or do not respect the Geneva Conventions there is incontrovertible proof that the Bush administration authorized coercive interrogation techniques banned by Geneva and that the CIA may still be using them at secret centers and encouraging their use by transferring suspects to countries where they will be tortured – countries listed by our own State Department as serial human rights abusers.
In the past week it has also been reported that despite international condemnation of the force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo, the Pentagon has established new guidelines for doctors and other medical professionals and has advocated the practice. Reputable international medical groups, including doctors from at least 7 European countries, have condemned fellow professionals in the US for being involved in force-feeding, deeming the technique unethical and a breach of the medical code.
The cumulative effect, say critics, of the Bush Administration’s disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal because it appeared that the US military approved the use of coercive techniques to acquire information in the war in terror. That laissez faire attitude, and at times deliberate encouragement of special interrogation methods, led directly to soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan feeling they were not confined by Geneva. Now, as evidence mounts of a massacre of innocent Iraqi men, women and children by Marines at Haditha, and while the military investigates other questionable killings in Iraq, there is likely to be a growing clamor for those higher in the military chain of command to be held accountable. It will be argued that they, as well as policymakers in Washington, fomented an environment in which it was clear human rights abuses would be committed and in which soldiers would spiral out of control. Therefore, they should all be held accountable. In the months ahead as the full story of the Haditha killings comes to light and Congressional inquiries begin, questions will be asked about how much the Bush Administration’s lack of respect for the Geneva Conventions created a mindset in which events like Haditha and Abu Ghraib were inevitable.