The US, The UN and Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld's own disdain for international humanitarian law was apparent in January 2002, when suspected Taliban and al-Qaida members were transported to the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Ignoring criticism from a number of European leaders, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and even the normally neutral Red Cross, Rumsfeld insisted the detainees were not prisoners of war and refused to convene the tribunals required under the Geneva Conventions to determine their status. He also ignored advice from the Pentagon's judge advocate generals, and based his decision instead on an analysis provided by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, a former corporate lawyer from Texas. The suspects, who have still not been charged or granted access to counsel, remain at Guantanamo: at least 14 have attempted suicide.

There is no love lost between the Defense Secretary and his military lawyers. In October 2002, CIA operatives used a Predator drone to track the Taliban leader Mullah Omar to a building in a residential area of Kabul. An air strike was called off because a lawyer at US Central Command was concerned about the risk of disproportionate civilian casualties. According to a report in the New Yorker, the incident left Rumsfeld 'kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors'. The Secretary has subsequently taken steps to reduce the number of lawyers in uniform.

Rumsfeld has also been encouraging a re-evaluation of the prohibition on targeting civilians, particularly with regard to actions directed at shattering support for the opponent regime.

...Michael Quinlan, a former Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, writing in the Tablet (1 February):

It has become more and more widely recognised, in much of United States opinion as well as almost overwhelmingly elsewhere, that a regime-changing invasion would carry heavy risks both in direct costs of life, expenditure and social damage, and in possible repercussions for the future running of Iraq, the stability of the region, the campaign against terrorists and the global economy. Scepticism about whether dealing with Saddam Hussein is practically and morally worth the running of these risks has grown as public attention has reflected upon the gravity of the extraordinary step of starting a war more or less in cold blood. The notion of preventive war, to be undertaken without either evidence of imminent attack or urgent humanitarian catastrophe, is profoundly disquieting both in itself and as a concept to be let loose around the world. 'We would surely have pre-empted 11 September had we known' is no argument; we cannot operate on hypotheses of foreseeing the future.

The Secretary has subsequently taken steps to reduce the number of lawyers in uniform.