Presidential Advisor Karl Rove claimed enhanced interrogation techniques were not constituted as torture, or in violation of the Geneva Conventions, saying: “until the flawed [June 29] 2006 Supreme Court decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Geneva Conventions’ ‘Common Article III’ protections were intended to cover civil wars, not international terrorist attacks. Broader Geneva protections were meant to apply only to signatory nations, which means they don’t apply to al-Qaida. They were designed to create an incentive for soldiers to fight in a way that upholds the basic rules of war, including sparing innocent civilians and minimizing suffering even among combatants.”
– Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence, Page 296