American prohibitions on abuse of prisoners go back to the Lieber Code promulgated by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The first international Geneva Convention dates from the following year.

After World War II, international law protecting prisoners of war and all noncombatants was codified in the Geneva Conventions. They were ratified by the US Senate and, under Article II of the Constitution, they thereby became the law of the land.

Wishing to rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein, in 1996 a Republican-dominated Congress passed the War Crimes Act without a dissenting vote. It defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. It thereby advanced a global trend of mutual reinforcement between national and international law.

The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised
President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the United States captured in
Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

Noting that the statute "prohibits the commission of a 'war crime' by or against a US person, including US officials," he warned that "it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges." The President's determination that the Geneva Conventions did not apply "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

Unfortunately for top Bush officials, that "solid defense" was demolished this summer when the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruled that the Geneva Conventions were indeed the law of the land.

The Court singled out Geneva's Common Article 3, which provides a minimum standard for the treatment of all noncombatants under all circumstances. They must be "treated humanely" and must not be subjected to "cruel treatment," "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," or "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center pointed out in the August 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rusmfeld "suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the [Guantánamo] military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them" because "the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3--and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime." A similar argument would indicate that top US officials have also committed war crimes by justifying interrogation methods that, according to the testimony of US military lawyers, also violate Common Article 3.

Lo and behold, the legislation the Administration has circulated on Capitol Hill would decriminalize such acts retroactively. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told the Associated Press on August 10, "I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous." Human rights attorney Scott Horton told Democracy Now! on August 16 that one of the purposes of the proposed legislation is "to grant immunity or impunity to certain individuals. And these are mostly decision-makers within the government."

The Coming Debate

Bush officials have not acknowledged that one of their real motives for gutting the War Crimes Act is to protect themselves from being prosecuted for their own crimes. But so far they have apparently offered only one other reason for tampering with the law: The existing law, especially the Geneva language prohibiting "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," is too vague to enforce. (Perhaps the Bush Administration should declare the US Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" as too vague to enforce as well.)

Fidell noted in an August 9 Washington Post article that military law includes many terms like "dereliction of duty," "maltreatment" and "conduct unbecoming an officer" that may appear vague but that are nonetheless enforceable. The Army Field Manual bars cruel and degrading treatment. When Attorney General Gonzales recently testified at a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that "outrages upon personal dignity" was too ambiguous, Senator John McCain stated that top military lawyers see no problem in complying with Common Article 3.

The arguments for preserving the War Crimes Act and rejecting the Bush amendments, in contrast, are multiple and overwhelming:

1. Commitment to the Geneva Conventions protects US service people from future retaliation.

As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has argued, abandoning the Geneva Conventions would put US soldiers at greater risk, would "reverse over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions" and would "undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict [Afghanistan] and in general."

2. The War Crimes Act will prohibit "torture-lite" in the future.

According to Scott Horton, the proposed legislation is "designed to provide an OK to certain techniques which fall just short of torture that are being used by the
CIA," including "waterboarding, longtime standing and hypothermia," techniques that have been "linked to severe injuries and fatalities."

3. The War Crimes Act will prohibit future
Abu Ghraib-type outrages.

The Bush Administration's legislation would remove the prohibition on "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Repealing the War Crimes Act, the Washington Post's R. Jeffrey Smith reported, is decriminalizing the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear that shocked the world at Abu Ghraib prison.

Derek P. Jinks an assistant law professor at the University of Texas, author of a forthcoming book on the Geneva Conventions, said in an August 9 Washington Post article that the "entire family of techniques" used to degrade, humiliate and coerce prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo "is not addressed in any way, shape or form" in the Bush Administration's proposal. Retired Army Lieut. Col. Geoffrey Corn, until recently chief of the war law branch of the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General, said in the same article, "This removal of [any] reference to humiliating and degrading treatment will be perceived by experts and probably allies as 'rewriting'" the Geneva Conventions.

This "rewriting" could have very concrete ramifications in practice. The international tribunal prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia deemed acts like placing prisoners in "inappropriate conditions of confinement," forcing them to urinate or defecate in their clothes, and threatening them with "physical, mental, or sexual violence" to be humiliations, degrading treatment and outrages. The proposed changes to the War Crimes Act would indicate that it is not a crime for Americans to conduct such acts.

4. Gutting the War Crimes Act will promote the perception of the United States as an outlaw country.

As a letter signed by sixteen members of Congress recently said, such legislation "would harm the reputation of the United States as a leader promoting and protecting human rights." What would be more deserving of scorn than a country that lets potential war-crime defendants repeal the very law under which they might be prosecuted?

5. The Bush legislation unfairly exempts high government officials from the very war crimes charges they are leveling against lowly "grunts."

Since the start of the Iraq War there have been more than thirty prosecutions under the military law that prohibits war crimes, with many more pending. But they have all prosecuted low-level military personnel. Gutting the War Crimes Act would leave the military "bad apples" at the bottom subject to prosecution but would let the civilian "bad apples" at the top evade all responsibility.

As Horton points out, the Uniform Code of Military Justice already incorporates the Geneva Convention rules, but it does not apply "to Donald Rumsfeld or Stephen Cambone or to people in the White House." The point of the War Crimes Act is that it "spreads the application of the Geneva Conventions the next level up to civilians, and particularly to civilian policymakers." From the beginning, the "prosecutorial focus" of the War Crimes Act "was intended to provide deterrence at that level." Repealing it undermines the fundamental principle of equal justice under law.

6. Preserving the War Crimes Act is part of reasserting the rule of law in America.

The War Crimes Act has been a central focus of the Bush Administration's scorn for all Constitutional limits on the power of the President and the executive branch. It was the idea that the President could by fiat declare US and international law null and void that animated the Gonzales torture memo. It was this denial of constitutional limits that the Supreme Court resoundingly rebuked in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. A rebuff to the Bush Administration's attack on the War Crimes Act is a reassertion of those constitutional limits.

The War Crimes Act can be a bridge to a more just and peaceful world. The incorporation of the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions on war crimes into national law affirms America's commitment to international law. It embodies an implementation of the global heritage of the Nuremberg trials, the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. It embeds that tradition within our own national law.

In the wake of World War II, Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, observed that "the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law." Making statesmen responsible to law is what the War Crimes Act is all about.

Defending the Law

The arguments for preserving the War Crimes Act are conclusive (except perhaps to those who might face criminal prosecution under them). Indeed, the Administration's decision to gut the War Crimes Act is a gift to those who want to see American statesmen held accountable to national and international law. It suggests that the Bush Administration itself recognizes the criminality of many of its actions. And it shows in the sharpest relief why the War Crimes Act is needed.

But, at least for the moment, Bush's Republican allies still control both houses of Congress; they are in a position to slip a repeal of the War Crimes Act into any piece of legislation they choose. Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, senior member of the House Committee for Homeland Security, told The Nation, "The Bush Administration and the GOP leadership in Congress is trying to quietly excuse and even codify cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody, at secret CIA prisons abroad and even the abhorrent practice of extraordinary rendition [the outsourcing of torture and other cruel treatment to other countries]."

While the Administration has been lining up its ducks, the campaign to save the War Crimes Act has just begun. The advocacy group Just Foreign Policy has started an online campaign to save the War Crimes Act. "This is not an obscure point in the law. What's at stake here is whether, for example, the abuses of prisoners by sexual humiliation that shocked us at Abu Ghraib are clearly illegal under US law," national coordinator Robert Naiman observes. "If we found these actions outrageous, we are obligated to tell our members of Congress to protect the law that bans them."

Markey adds, "Every American citizen should call the White House and their members of Congress because these changes being made in the dead of night could be the green light for other countries that capture American troops to treat them cruelly or torture them."

"If we allow them to do this, if we retreat from Iraq, if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50 years from now, history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act," Bush said.

"I'm not going to allow this to happen and no future American president can allow it either," he said.

Bush, in an unusual move, quoted extensively from bin Laden's videotaped messages and writings, and compared him to global menaces like Russia's Vladimir Lenin and Germany's Adolf Hitler.

He cited in particular a letter from bin Laden to the former Taliban ruler, Mullah Omar, that coalition forces found in Afghanistan in 2002. The White House released a text of this letter.

'CAN DESTROY THE FREE WORLD'

In the letter, bin Laden wrote that an objective of al Qaeda should be to launch a media campaign to try to drive a wedge between the American people and their government and tell them that "their government would bring them more losses, in finances and in casualties," and that they are being sacrificed to serve the interests of big investors, "especially the Jews."

Bush said al Qaeda intends to create many bases worldwide "from which they can plan new attacks and advance their vision of a unified totalitarian Islamic state that can confront and eventually destroy the free world."

Bin Laden has declared Iraq "the capital of the caliphate," said Bush, who has often faced criticism for trying to tie Iraq into the broader war on terrorism spurred by the September 11 attacks.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry said in response that if Bush had killed bin Laden in late 2001, "he wouldn't have to quote this barbarian's words today."

"Afghanistan is slipping back into chaos, Pakistan is one coup away from becoming a radical Islamic state with nuclear weapons, Iran is closer to a nuclear arsenal, and Iraq has become a recruitment poster for terror ... A new document may get the administration through the next news cycle, but it will not win the war on terror. We need to change course, not more of the same," Kerry said.

Bush also charged that Iran is the world's most active state sponsor of international terrorism and must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

He said the international community had made a "reasonable offer" to Iran and added: "We will continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution, the world's free nation will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon."

White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend told reporters she was concerned Americans were growing complacent about the threat of terrorism because there has been no large-scale attack in the United States since September 11.

All 435 House seats, 34 of 100 Senate seats and 36 governorships are at stake on November 7. Democrats need to pick up 15 House seats and six Senate seats to reclaim majorities.

The Afghan mission was the subject of a number of proposed resolutions, all calling for the withdrawal of Canadian troops. "The Canadian occupation is propping up a regime composed of barbarous warlords who are little better than the Taliban," says one riding association.

The resolution comparing Canadian troops to terrorists, put forward by the Nanaimo-Cowichan riding association in British Columbia, says Canada's goals "cannot be achieved by violence when the 'enemy' cannot be distinguished from ordinary citizens" and calls for Canadian troops to be withdrawn from that country.

Its release comes as the bodies of five Canadian soldiers were returned home after being killed in the Kandahar region on the weekend.

A spokesman for Jack Layton said the NDP leader would not comment on the language used in the resolution or indicate whether he intended to vote for it.

"These resolutions have not been debated yet and have absolutely no status at this time," Karl Belanger said.

Jean Crowder, the NDP MP for Nanaimo-Cowichan, also refused to comment on the resolution before it has been debated at the convention.

Last week, Mr. Layton called for the withdrawal of Canadian troops, claiming Afghanistan is "not the right mission for Canada." At that time, he said New Democrats support the Canadian Forces and are proud of the work they do.

Mr. Layton's call to bring the 2,300 troops home has been criticized by both Conservatives and Liberals, particularly since he reiterated it following the death of four Canadians in Afghanistan. Yesterday, he issued a statement expressing his condolences to the bereaved families that made no mention of his desire to withdraw combat troops.

The resolution by Ms. Crowder's riding association singles out NDP MP Peter Stoffer, who supports the mission in Afghanistan.

"This is not an acceptable position when world peace hangs in the balance. A combat role in Afghanistan is a no-win situation both for Canada and for the Afghani people. Its only dubious value is to curry favour with the militarist government of George W. Bush," it says.

Mr. Stoffer said yesterday delegates are free to express their opinions.

"But I absolutely fundamentally disagree with the statement. The people who did it are not only very naive but very antagonistic in their point of view," he said. The NDP draft policy resolutions appeared briefly on the party Web site last week before being taken down. However, Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor obtained a copy and posted them on his Web site yesterday.

The resolution about Israel calls for the end to "military aid and economic trade," claiming "there can be no lasting peace in Palestine/Israel or the surrounding region without social justice."

The Trinity-Spadina riding association in Toronto called for the NDP to support the right of return for all refugees, an end to Israeli settlements and "occupation" of Palestine lands, "a halt to armed aggression, the bulldozing of homes, destruction of olive groves and farms and the assassination of political leaders and activists by the Israeli state."

It said the NDP should campaign for an end to the "rule of apartheid laws that make Palestinians and Israeli Arabs second- and third-class citizens under occupation" and added it is opposed to the use of suicide bombings against civilian targets.

Despite the widespread criticism, Darrell Bricker of pollster Ipsos Reid said the anti-war stance may pay electoral dividends for the NDP -- and the Conservatives.

"If this issue drives the next vote, Layton could pull enough anti-war votes from the Liberals to help elect Tories," he said. He said the Liberals are in a difficult position on Afghanistan because they launched the mission, and at least two of the leadership candidates -- Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison -- are in favour of its extension to 2009.

Comment: This is a must watch... Only the facts expose Bush and the gang for the Hoaxters they really are. You'll get a few real laughs out of this one!

The 360 extra British troops will be deployed in southern Iraq to reinforce the 19 Light Brigade which takes over from the 20 Armoured Brigade, at present based in Basra, later this year, the MoD said. They will include soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, based in Cyprus, Royal Engineers, Royal Marines and Military Police.

The MoD said the engineers would help counter the threat from improvised explosive devices, which have killed 19 British soldiers patrolling in "snatch" Land Rovers over the last 16 months. A Royal Marine boat troop will be deployed to step up security on the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which borders Iran. The extra military police will train local Iraqi forces.

At a joint Baghdad press conference, Mrs Beckett distanced herself from comments by the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, who said all 7,200 British troops in Iraq could be gone by the end of 2007, by which time Iraqi security forces would have taken over their responsibilities.

She said the president was only offering a personal opinion and "not setting a deadline". Withdrawal would depend on the capability of Iraqi forces to take over from British forces.

She said: "Coalition forces can't go now because that would create a security vacuum." She added that Iraq was making "very slow" progress on security, describing it as "two steps forward, two steps sideways".

A Foreign Office official said one of the biggest concerns was the growing involvement of Iran, which was pouring billions of pounds into Iraq, extending its influence there. Tehran enjoys a close relationship with some of the leading parties in the Shia-led Iraqi government coalition.

British officials also say Iranian elements are backing Shia militia which have infiltrated Iraqi security forces in the south of the country and are supplying equipment for increasingly sophisticated improvised roadside bombs.

In London, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned of the threat posed by jihadists experienced in fighting foreign troops in Iraq.

"The fear is that some jihadists will survive US-led counter-insurgency efforts and relocate to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Europe, and possibly the United States, better trained and motivated to perpetrate and direct terrorist operations," it warned in its latest annual strategic survey.

It added: "Events in Iraq [have] also prompted jihadists to refine and propagate urban warfare techniques, and they may choose to apply them robustly to cities elsewhere." The institute concluded: "In taking stock of counter-terrorism five years on from September 11, a grim picture emerges."

One of two British soldiers killed near Basra on Monday when a roadside bomb hit his Land Rover was named yesterday as Gunner Stephen Wright, 20, of the Royal Artillery. His father, Stephen Leigh, from Leyland, Lancs, said: "I don't want to get into why the army are there or whether they should be ... but it's hard that he's a victim of this conflict".

Meanwhile, a British soldier killed on Monday by a suicide bomber in the Afghan capital, Kabul, was named as Private Craig O'Donnell, 24, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. His parents said he was looking forward to setting up home with his girlfriend Jessica and to the birth of their first child at Christmas.

"There has been responsibility that has been transferred already and we hope and believe that that is a process that will continue," she said.

For his part, Salih said that by the end of this year, security control of nearly nine of the 18 provinces will be handed over to Iraqis, and command of Iraqi armed forces will be handed over to Iraqis this week.

Beckett arrived here Monday night on an official visit to Iraq, the first since she took up the post in May.

In July, British forces handed over control of Iraq's southern Muthanna province to Iraqi security forces, while Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said last month that another southern province, Dhi Qar, would follow suit in September.

"Their choice is increasingly isolating the great Iranian nation from the international community. It is time for Iran's leader to make a different choice," Bush said.

The United States has accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of civilian nuclear programs. Iran has said that its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes only.

The United Sates is now seeking to impose sanctions on Iran for its refusal to comply with a UN Security Council resolution demanding Teheran stop uranium enrichment.

The United States is "waiting for the new explanation from Iran," Schulte told the Austria News Agency. If Iran would not stop its "discomforting activities," the UN Security Council should discuss the sanctions against Iran, he said.

Schulte stressed the common stand with the EU ahead of Wednesday's talks between EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani. The talks are considered by many a final chance to compromise on enrichment, which Tehran has vowed not to give up.

Observers see the Solana-Larijani meeting as the prelude to Thursday's conference of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain -- plus Germany.

The flurry of diplomacy followed Tehran's rejection of UN resolution 1696 which had called on Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program by Aug. 31.

On their informal conference on Saturday, the EU foreign ministers decided to maintain the serious talks with Tehran in efforts to solve Iran's nuclear issue through diplomacy.

"While applying economic sanctions or military operations to Iran, one must be aware of the fact that they will consolidate the Iranian people around the government and strengthen their support to the uranium enrichment program," Shuvalov said.

"When 60 million Iranian citizens decide to support the non-peaceful uranium enrichment program, that would be very dangerous indeed," he said.

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution in late July, urging Tehran to suspend by Aug. 31 all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, or face prospect of sanctions, which was refused by Tehran.