Depends what definition 'meets' meets

The Pentagon says Guantánamo meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. This may well be true - now - but there's a short limit how far I'm willing to take on faith a self-assessment, particularly with the brass so heavily salted with holdover Bushists.

What I'd really like to see is a self-assessment that shows enough honesty to admit that for many years during Duhbya and Darth's rule (with Rummy raining snowflake memos down on the Pentagon), the way Guantánamo was run openly flouted Geneva.

That would be a start to recovering the traditional credibility of the military, which it had painstakingly rebuilt since Vietnam, only to fritter it all away on Iraq and torture.

Things we already knew

Dan Froomkin notes Andrew Bacevich's review of Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. The Bushists don't care, and the rest of us already know that we live under an outlaw regime.

Bird on a wire

In fifty-plus years, authoritarian Republicans have devolved the things they wave around all the way to a pair of panties: "I have in my hand a pair of panties that has humiliated over 317 al Qaeda terrorists at Guantánamo." Just like Ann Coulter's fantasy drinking buddy Joe McCarthy, Dana Rohrabacher pretends that concern for security policy is his chief goal, when in fact unfettered power and political gain are the real purpose.

Look, Dana, no matter how many times you say that the prisoners should be just as happy as Mel Gibson cheek to jowl with Goldie Hawn's thong, you're off point. Even Divine's panties wouldn't be torture (well, maybe), though they'd definitely violate the Geneva Conventions.

Your cry of panties, panties, panties is the puerile stunt of a manipulative 10-year-old. It's waterboarding that's torture, and you're defending it by trying to distract the media into immature giggles. It's as if a murderer, caught with a smoking gun in one hand and a pillow with a through and through in the other, defends himself by saying, "Well, I didn't suffocate that dead guy."

An official defense of torture (again, the waterboard, stupid) that helps it continue could be a war crime.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Outrages upon dignity

Again, as usual, we see the Bushists offer the thinnest tissue of lies to cover their crimes. The Third Geneva Convention doesn't ban aiming to outrage the dignity of prisoners. It bans actually performing "outrages upon personal dignity."

Confirmation of worst fears?

Originally a comment on this post on DailyKos.

Confirmation hearings will tell us whether the Democrats are going to go gently. Gonzales is best qualified for jail or least to serve fascism. Here's my list:

• Abu Ghraib war crimes
  
• Guantanamo - conscious violation of Geneva Conventions
  
• cavalier approach to the death penalty in Texas
  
• Plame affair questions