And the Chickens Begin to Come Home to Roost

May 24, 2006: "[A] NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation—methods that the Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."

Joe Biden, who supported and continues to support the war (h/t First Draft): [P]rohibitions against torture are intended to "protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties. So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it."

June 20, 2006: Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at Iraqi Ministry of Defense said the soldiers had been "barbarically" killed and that there were traces of torture on their bodies. He offered no further details.

Geneva Conventions, yawn. How quaint.