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• Thursday, November 20, 2008 05:00 AM

  In defense of jschultz - and Holder

  The opinion that the Third Geneva Convention applies is just that - an opinion. That convention was not designed to cover a war-on-terror situation. Example: should the Chinese Uyghurs be repatriated to China? That's what the convention requires.

  If POW status is denied, it does not automatically follow that you can torture prisoners or do what you want. That is just nonsense. And Holder never said he wanted to deny Article 3 protection to anyone. Glenn says that he wanted to do that, but it does not follow at all from his words. Glenn also says Holder's stance was repudiated by the Hamdan decision, but that's only true if we believe the worst interpretation possible.

  Here's where Glenn (and yes, I did plow my way through the thread) is mistaken: from Holder's opinion that

  they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war.

  Glenn draws the conclusion that

  the position espoused by Holder, Rumsfeld and the Bush administration was rejected by the Supreme Court in Hamdan, when it ruled that even Al Qaeda detainees are entitled to the minimum protections afforded to all detainees by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

  Aside from the intellectual dishonesty of lumping Holder with Rumsfeld, the Hamdan decision does not grant POW status. It grants Article 3 protection, which Holder at no place denies to anyone.

  In Update II Glenn goes even further, deleting the "They are not prisoners of war" sentence to fit his ends;

  Contrary to what several commenters have suggested, it seems clear that Holder -- in the 2002 interview -- was not merely arguing that Guantanamo detainees should be denied "prisoner of war" status. He was arguing, explicitly, that they were entitled to no Geneva protections of any kind (as he put it: "they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention").

  On the contrary, when you add the deleted sentence, the very opposite is clear: that Holder was referring to the Third Convention, not the Conventions in their entirety.

  Or this: Holder (still speaking of the Third Convention and in no way limiting Common Article 3):

  entitled to be treated in a very humane way and almost consistent with all of the dictates of the Geneva Convention.

  Glenn makes of that:

  no Geneva protections of any kind.

  Sorry, but this is wrong, and the insistence that it's right, is just stubbornness.

  —Hans B Read Hans B's other letters
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