pedantic tediousness
It could also be termed simply a lack of sloppy generalities, and attempt to clean up some fuzzy thinking.
Here's where fuzzy and vicious thinking leads, in this case in military terms, in contravention of international and US military law:
xymphora.blogspot.com
"The taking of hostages in Iraq by the Americans raises a number of issues, some of which go well beyond the incident itself:
Despite some tortured arguments I've read on the internet, there does not seem to be any doubt that the hostage taking described breaches international law and American law. The incident was described in the Washington Post as follows:
"Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: 'If you want your family released, turn yourself in.' Such tactics are justified, he said, because, 'It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.' They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered."
Article 1(1) of the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages, which the United States has ratified, states (my emphasis):
"Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as the "hostage") in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages ("hostage-taking") within the meaning of this Convention."
What Col. David Hogg described clearly falls under Article 1(1). It is no excuse to say that it was some kind of prank, or that the Americans intended to release the hostages. Obviously, hostage takers often intend to release their hostages (unless they intend to become murderers), so intention to release them if allowed as a defense would render the law meaningless. There is also no exception in the Convention for hostage taking used as a method of intelligence gathering. The fact that this sort of thing often happens is also no excuse. |
