Something else Gonzales should be asked about

As recently as May, the New York Times reminds us, Defense Secretary Donald Rumplestiltskin asserted in public testimony that the Shrub gang held that

"everyone in Iraq who was a military person" as well as "the civilians or criminal elements" who were detained by the American authorities would be "treated subject to the Geneva Conventions."

Now, however, it develops that two months earlier there was already a draft memo being circulated trying to establish the legality of the CIA secretly taking non-Iraqi prisoners out of the country for what these days is euphemistically called "interrogation." And now, a consensus has been reached and

[a] new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply. ...

The administration officials did not specify exactly how decisions about an individual's status under the Geneva Conventions would be made. But they said that the factors would include nationality, affiliation with terrorist organizations and activities inside Iraq, and that the decisions would be made by American government agencies who held the individuals in their custody.

In other words, they'll do whatever they damn please because they're making it up as they go along without the need for any overall legal guidance that can't simply be re-written to fit the circumstances.

Think I'm being too cynical?

"At the outset of the hostilities in Iraq, both the Defense Department and the agency were instructed by the Justice Department that the Geneva Conventions apply for Iraq," [Justice Department spokesman Mark] Corallo said.

Still, a Justice Department official said separately, "No matter what the provision is in the Geneva Convention, they are subject to legal interpretation."

I'm not being cynical at all.