President George W. Bush has become a scary person. The other day, a fellow journalist and I spoke about Bush and how in this day and age our president is willing to go against the Geneva Convention and permit the United States to torture people, ignoring this agreement which protects prisoners of war (POWs).
So who’s right? Recently in the news, it seems that Congress and Bush had made an agreement or deal with some people about how to give the president what he has been asking for. According to a column on CBSnews.com, by Byron York, “McCain/Graham/Warner camp, the two sides had basically agreed that there would be no clarification or redefinition depending on which side you listened to of the Geneva Convention.” The column further states, “Instead a new bill would specify illegal practices under the War Crimes Act, as the senators had wanted.”
So what does this new bill state? According to the column Stephen Hadley, National Security adviser, was quoted as saying, “The president said that his sole standard with respect to Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Convention] was going to be whether the CIA would be able to go forward with a program for questioning terrorists.”
It means that the CIA can’t breach what everyone is calling “grave breaches,” which means that no one can torture, use cruel or inhumane treatment, perform biological experiments, murder, mutilate or maime, rape, cause serious bodily injury, sexual assault or abuse or take hostages.
But what haven’t been discussed are non-grave breaches. An un-named source in the column said, “Non-grave breaches are something else…We are going to spell out grave breaches and then it is up to the administration to come up with sanctions for violations that are less than grave breaches.”
This matter concerns me the most because if it isn’t “grave breaches” and Congress is willing to leave it to the administration for the rest, then who will check on them or question them if they should violate the law? My concern is that no one has considered the actions of non-grave breaches. We, the American people, won’t know if the administration has gone out-of-bounds or if there will be a trial for those who have been detained by our government. But will this new deal work? Only time will tell.
As of right now, I believe we’re going to have to wait and see how everything will play out. I am glad that Congress and President Bush have at least reached some agreement, no matter how vague that agreement is.
Hopefully in the end, our administration will not step out-of-bounds when dealing with POWs and follow the guidelines of the Geneva Convention and what Congress has set aside.
Julie Sparkhul is a junior journalism major and the calendar editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
