When the twits who comprise the Bush administration decided that TWOT (The War On Terror) required us to ride roughshod over the Geneva conventions, and then proceeded to do just that with the aid of Justice Department briefs and memos and signed pieces of presidential paper, they forgot one little thing. That we have a law on the books which makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions, and a capital crime if detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

One would have imagined that between all those legal luminaries in the Justice Department and the White House – including one who was the best qualified candidate in the U.S. for a Supreme Court appointment (before two lesser lights were nominated and confirmed) and another who was rumored to be a strong contender – someone would have remembered the laws of the land. Especially given how many experts we seem to have when it comes to human rights, constitutional rights and other miscellaneous rights that our creator may have endowed us all with.

But we can’t really blame the Bush administration “lawyers” too much. To err is human, after all. And fortunately the Bush administration is sufficiently grounded in reality to do no more than pay lip service to that whole stupid “to forgive is divine” claptrap. They know perfectly well that what is divine is to erase.

But let me turn it over to WaPo for a cogent explanation:

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

…Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such “protections,” according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said.

An elegant solution, really. Let’s just legislate blanket protections for past violations.

Someone should really sit the president down, and explain to him and his administration that abstinence is the best form of protection. It is proven to be 100% effective in eradicating all kinds of virulent diseases, even of the body politic.