The Status of Detainees from the Iraq and Afghanistan Conflicts

The Bush administration has taken a position which attempts to dance around international law to achieve the objective of obtaining high quality information from detainees. There is no dispute that obtaining high quality information about future terrorist attacks is critical to preventing future attacks, but at what cost? A more prudent approach by the Bush administration would have been use of the worldwide support received after 9/11 to modify the international rules of law concerning the treatment of detainees of war on terror. At that point, the world would likely have been receptive to creating exceptions to international law to even allow the torture of detainees in order to prohibit a catastrophic terrorist attack.

Instead, the Bush administration, by its actions, has jeopardized respect for the rule of law, reduced its standing in the international community, and placed its own soldiers and citizens captured in future conflicts at risk.