this is what i'd call throwing out the baby with the bathwater

October 26, 2004
NY TIMES
U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.
The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said.