Bush was for detainee rights before he was against them

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WASHINGTON, July 12 - A day after saying that terror suspects had a right to protections under the Geneva Conventions, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it wanted Congress to pass legislation that would limit the rights granted to detainees.

The earlier statement had been widely interpreted as a retreat, but testimony to Congress by administration lawyers on Wednesday made clear that the picture was more complicated.

The administration has now abandoned its four-year-old claim that members of Al Qaeda are not protected under the Geneva Conventions, acknowledging that a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago established as a matter of law that they are. Still, administration lawyers urged Congress to pass legislation that would narrowly define the rights granted to detainees under a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article Three, which guarantees legal rights "recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

In a week of hearings on Capitol Hill, administration lawyers have argued that the best way to bring detainees to trial after the court's ruling would be for Congress to ratify the military commissions the court struck down, with what Daniel J. Dell'Orto, a Pentagon deputy general counsel, described as "minor tweaking."

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,426604,00.html