mattd wrote:
US violates the Geneva Convention
The US is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, which specifies the conditions under which such prisoners are to be treated. The Convention covers irregular forces such as al-Qaeda as well as regular armed forces,
Al-Quaeda is not a military force by any reasonable reckoning; it is a criminal association whose victims are defenseless and innocent of any involvement (pro or anti) in the cause that the criminal association claims to espouse.
and a quick skim suggests that the US are violating it in several ways. Interrogation: the US has publicly stated they will interrogate the prisoners; however this is specificly forbidden by the convention.
Interrogation is certainly NOT prohibited by the Convention. Where are you getting this nonsense? Every army of every signatory power has interrogators trained and ready to process prisoners of war. Every infantry leader is trained to rapidly elicit information of immediate tactical value from the enemy soldiers whom he captures.
No prisoner is bound to give anything more than the infamnous "name, rank and serial number" (or equivalent); coercion to gain more information is expressly forbidden "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." (Article 17)
Right. Coercion and torture forbidden. Asking questions is not. Use of trickery is not. Many other means of obtaining information are not.
Housing: the US are housing the POWs in wire-mesh cages. Unless US troops are quartered in similar conditions, this is a violation: "Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favourable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area.
The Convention certainly did not envision eliminating security precautions against the escape of prisoners!
Trial and punishment: POWs are considered to be subject to the same laws and regulations as soldiers of the detaining power; they may be tried only by military courts (except where jurisdiction would normally belong to civil courts), and sentances must be the same as for soldiers of the detaining power commiting similar acts. POWs tried for acts commited prior to capture retain the benefits of the Convention even if convicted.
I'll say it again - these are not prisoners of war!
If US prisoners were treated in this manner, the US would be kicking and screaming. Is this another case of US moral exceptionalism?
If the US prisoners in question had engineered, or were suspected of having engineered, the deaths of thousands of innocent people, I suspect that even LESS sympathy or consideration would be shown them. They certainly would not get any from me. Marc de Piolenc