But that's the crucial difference between the Germans and what's happening now. Those German POWs who had no civil rights and couldn't petition for habeas corpus were guaranteed minimum rights under the Geneva Convention.
Bush wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to hold people indefinitely without civilian rights, but also not have to give them the minimum of protections offered under Geneva.
In order to do that, he invented out of whole cloth a new category of "enemy combatant" that is neither civilian, nor military, and thus, in their minds, escape all the human rights safeguards that international and domestic law provide.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's the crucial difference between the Germans and what's happening now. Those German POWs who had no civil rights and couldn't petition for habeas corpus were guaranteed minimum rights under the Geneva Convention. Bush wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to hold people indefinitely without civilian rights, but also not have to give them the minimum of protections offered under Geneva. In order to do that, he invented out of whole cloth a new category of "enemy combatant" that is neither civilian, nor military, and thus, in their minds, escape all the human rights safeguards that international and domestic law provide.