Rumsfeld’s kinda, sorta apology for tossing out the Geneva convention for Afghan detainees.
The former secretary of defense says he has regrets about the administration’s controversial detainee policy – but only about the process, how it was formulated, not the policy itself.
“All of a sudden, it was just all happening, and the general counsel’s office in the Pentagon had the lead,” Rumsfeld said, trying to pass the buck and weasel out of responsibility, even as he admitted the mistake.
In the Department of Defense, which had authority for Gitmo, the policy initially took the form of a since-declassified January 2002 memo, written by Rumsfeld, that said Al Qaida and Taliban detainees “are not entitled to prisoner of war status” under the Geneva Convention.
This memo, as Graham puts it, “effectively nullified half a century of U.S. military adherence to the [Geneva] conventions.”