The C.I.A. in Double Jeopardy

New York Times ^ | August 29, 2009 | Joseph Finder

[reaganaut1]

Early in 2002, Eric Holder, then a former deputy attorney general, said on CNN that the detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay were “not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention,” particularly “given the way in which they have conducted themselves.”

Six years later, declaring that “Guantánamo Bay is an international embarrassment,” Mr. Holder said, “I never thought I would see the day when ... the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention.”

So what changed?

A lot of things, of course, but most of all, our national political climate. Reeling from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many on the front lines of the war against terrorism felt a sense of fear and urgency that, years later, it’s hard for some to recall. Now, the attacks receding into the past, a lot of us see things in a different light.

Certainly Mr. Holder, now the attorney general, does. Last week he announced the appointment of a career prosecutor, John Durham, to review a dozen or so cases of abuses inflicted upon detainees by Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors in the course of carrying out “enhanced interrogation” (which they had been ordered to do, and which had been authorized by the Justice Department) and to determine whether to initiate a criminal investigation.

Mr. Holder doesn’t seem concerned that each of these cases was exhaustively reviewed, beginning in 2005, by career prosecutors under the supervision of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Those men had access to the complete, unredacted report of the agency’s inspector general, an expurgated version of which was released on Monday.

[reaganaut1]

This is not the "house view" of the Times or a piece by one of its regular columnists. That's why it makes sense.

[RightFighter]

The fact that it even appears in the Times is BAD news for Obama.

[bert]

Facts and rational thought play no part in the process and to consider either an meaningful is to misunderstand.

The rabid radical antiwar left wants a pound of flesh and is going to get it regardless of the destruction of our defenses. If it weren’t for defenses, we wouldn’t have the problem any way. With flakes like Kirsten Powers floating around and flaunting their moonbatism the President has no choice but to concede.

[bitterohiogunclinger]

“to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention.”

Two thoughts on this:
Are the detainees signatories of the Geneva Convention?
Were they in uniform when captured?

[BuffaloJack]

> Six years later, declaring that “Guantánamo Bay is an international embarrassment,”
It’s only an embarrassment if you care what communists across the globe think.