White House Yet To Respect Court on Geneva
The headlines from the NY Times, W. Post and AP claim that in a "big shift" in policy, the Bush Administration will now give Gitmo detainees "protections under Geneva Conventions."

Of course, "White House to Follow Supreme Court Ruling, Says Checks, Balances A-OK" shouldn't even be front page news. It should be a given.

But since the Bushies are showing signs of getting cute with how they apply Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to the prosecution of Gitmo detainees, yesterday's perfunctory Pentagon memo -- telling staff that the Court concluded the Geneva Conventions apply to detainee treatment in "the conflict with Al Qaeda" -- was treated by the press as a huge deal.

In fact, there's even less to the memo than that.

As Balkinization flagged, the memo indicates that the Pentagon considers its past treatment of detainees as legal under the Geneva Conventions (though it calls on staff to "review" procedures to make sure).

Since there's no admission that any policy or practice regarding detainee treatment violates Geneva, there's no order in the memo for any policy changes.

And since we can't trust this Administration to respect any action taken by a different branch of government, until an actual policy shift is codified, it is extremely premature to claim that the Bushies are in any way backing down from their opposition to human rights.