Changing the label is all that they do.
U.S. Won’t Label Terror Suspects as ‘Combatants’
The Obama administration said Friday that it would abandon the Bush administration’s term “enemy combatant” as it argues in court for the continued detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies.
But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration.
Does the slime taste better now?
Emtywheel analyzes the details and writes:
In short, it's a big, fat, cynical game. A word game, like any other parlor game, giving a tired old concept a verbal facelift. Without, however, changing the concept itself.