Policy objectives trumped law on detainee treatment

[maddezmom]

A team of five government attorneys reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that would have afforded detainees legal protections.
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantánamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.

It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.

The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. It ruled last Thursday that preventing detainees from challenging their detention in federal courts was unconstitutional.

The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the ''War Council,'' drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to avoid a scenario in which anyone -- from soldiers on the ground to the president -- could be held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.

more:http://www.miamiherald.com/guantanamo/story/574074.html