Following up on Tony Snow’s presser earlier this afternoon, as we noted, Snow argued that the White House doesn’t want to gut or reinterpret the minimum level anti-torture protections under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. They just want to help clarify the vague language.
Check back to the article in the Washington Post that ran on August 9th, however, for some helpful perspective.
The Post spoke to Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, who until recently was chief of the war law branch of the Army’s Office of the Judge Advocate General.
Corn told the Post … “that Common Article 3 was, according to its written history, ‘left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying ‘exceptions,’ and because the meaning was plain — treat people like humans and not animals or objects.'”
