»What is the difference between war,terrorism,assassinations?«

Detainees secretly taken out of Iraq, Practice called breach of Geneva Conventions... One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency has concealed the detainees from the International Red Cross and other authorities, the official said.
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During the war in Afghanistan, the [Bush] administration ruled that al Qaeda fighters were not considered "protected persons" under the convention.

Michael Byers, a professor and international law expert at University of British Columbia, said that creating a legal justification for removing protected persons from Iraq "is extraordinarily disturbing."
"What they are doing is interpreting an exception into an all-encompassing right, in one of the most fundamental treaties in history," Byers said. The Geneva Convention "is as close as you get to protecting human rights in times of chaos. There's no ambiguity here."

CIA officials have not disclosed the identities or locations of its Iraq detainees to congressional oversight committees, the Defense Department or CIA investigators who are reviewing detention policy, according to two informed U.S. government officials and a confidential e-mail on the subject shown to The Washington Post.
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The Office of Legal Counsel also wrote the Aug. 1, 2002, memo on torture that advised the CIA and White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in the war on terrorism. Bush's aides repudiated that memo once it became public this June.

The CIA has a rendition policy that has permitted the agency to transfer an unknown number of suspected terrorists captured in one country into the hands of security services in other countries whose record of human rights abuse is well documented. These individuals, as well as those at CIA detention facilities, have no access to any recognized legal process or rights.
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Senior defense leaders have repeatedly been called to explain and defend their policies before Congress. But the CIA's policies and practices remain shrouded in secrecy.

At the same time, when transferring Rashul back to Iraq, then CIA director George Tenet asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld not to give Rashul a prisoner number and to hide him from International Red Cross officials, according to an account provided by Rumsfeld during a June 17 Pentagon press conference. Rumsfeld complied.