Treatment of Detainees

The Supreme Court recently struck down the Bush administration's system for holding and trying detainees at the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The administration had maintained that the Geneva Conventions did not protect alleged terrorists captured in Afghanistan and other battlefields in the five-year-old war on terror, and critics say that policy led to the use of abusive interrogation methods, such as “water-boarding” and sleep deprivation. The critics, including top military lawyers, successfully argued that the United States was violating the laws of warfare. They also opposed military commissions the administration has proposed for conducting detainee trials. Bush said the war on terrorism required the commissions' streamlined procedures, which deny some rights guaranteed by the conventions. The court's decision leaves Congress with two options: require detainees to be tried under the military's existing court-martial system or create a new, legal version of the administration's commissions.