On January 9, 2002, John Yoo, a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel “circulated a draft memorandum to Bush officials that would provide much of the legal reasoning for the administration’s future actions concerning the detention and interrogation of prisoners. Yoo…concluded that neither the Taliban nor al-Qaeda were entitled to prisoner-of-war status, or the protections of the Geneva Convention. Yoo reasoned that al-Qaeda was a stateless entity not protected by Geneva and that the Taliban ran a ‘failed state,’ which meant that their treaty rights could be ignored. …The concept of ‘failed state’ wasn’t recognized by international law. Also, Afghanistan was a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and while the United States had not officially recognized the Taliban government, U.S. officials had met with Taliban officials on many occasions before 9/11 and had treated them as the de facto government of Afghanistan. In addition, there were no clauses in the Geneva Convention allowing states to unilaterally opt out of any of its provisions. And Article 3 of the Convention banned ‘humiliating and degrading treatment’ of prisoners even in the cases of conflicts that were not between two states. The Geneva Convention plainly stated that all prisoners in any type of conflict were given certain rights.“
– Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Pages 104-105