She favours ripping up the Human Rights Act, which enshrines convention protections, and has said so.
It objected to extending Geneva Convention protections to Al Qaeda detainees because they might have impeded interrogation efforts.
"The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections," Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith.
When he delivered this decision to the White House, he recalls, Mr. Addington exploded: " 'The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,' he barked.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seems already convinced that all those detained are "unlawful combatants" and therefore not legally entitled to Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war.
In the first, written in January 2002, Mr Gonzales advised Mr Bush that in the new war on terror the Geneva Convention protections for prisoners had, in his view, become "obsolete".
Many in the military are also concerned that as American troops assume roles far from traditional combat, they would be at risk of being treated as spies if captured and denied the Geneva Convention protections afforded military detainees.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued, however, that the United States was legally obligated by the United Nations Charter to follow the international court's decisions, and she emphasized the importance of complying to ensure reciprocal Vienna Convention protections for Americans arrested overseas.
THE PRISONERS -- In the face of international criticism and at the urging of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, President Bush agreed to review his stance against giving Geneva Convention protections to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
THE PRISONERS -- In a reversal that may help quell international criticism of U.S. treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush decided that Taliban fighters would be given Geneva Convention protections, but Al Qaeda fighters would not.
