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On this day when so much attention is focused on the departure of a much-mocked press secretary and Karl Rove's re-assignment, it's worth having a look in at the ever-thoughtful Washington Note, where Steve Clemons dissects a dinner talk given by Condoleezza' Rice's legal advisor, John Bellinger.

A highlight from his comments:

There are a lot of things out there that are just simply wrong. And so I have gone out to Europe to meet with people, to answer questions, to explain the legal framework that we're applying. And I'll just give you one or two examples so you get a sense of the generalities I'm talking about.

You know, every one of you all knows and probably most of you all believe that we in fact made up this term "unlawful combatants" and it fits people's theories that, of course, the Bush administration is just making up rules, throwing the established legal framework out the window and sort of made up its own terms. And it's just not true at all.

The term unlawful combatant is a term that's been around for about 40 or 50 years, clearly accepted in all of the international law textbooks. It applies to the category of people who are fighting you in a war, but are doing so in an unlawful way, i.e they're fighting your civilians rather than you or their otherwise not following the rules. And so therefore they're not entitled to the normal protections of the Geneva conventions. So they're called unlawful combatants.