Very good source, thanks... but I don't see where it disagrees with anything I've said (I never claimed, for example, that *ALL* fighters in Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter, would automatically be granted legal status as POWs....)
Also, you should have read down to the conclusion of the article you posted:
"In light of the array of tactics employed by combatants on the Iraqi side, confusion will inevitably surround the precise legal status of many Iraqi and foreign combatants captured by US and other Coalition forces. Because denial of POW status entails potentially serious consequences for combatants, such determinations must strictly comply with the dictates of the Third Convention. In this regard, Article 5 of that treaty creates a presumption that a captured combatant is a POW unless a competent tribunal determines otherwise on an individual basis. During the 1992 Gulf War and the Vietnam conflict the US convened such tribunals to verify the status of detainees, something that the US did not do – and for which it was justifiably criticized both at home and abroad – in denying POW status to all Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the Afghan conflict. Recent statements by US military briefers suggest that the Bush Administration is now listening to its law of war experts in the Pentagon and the State Department and plans to convene Article 5 tribunals to make proper status determinations, most likely at the conclusion of the hostilities.
Some of those 'recent statements' the article is referring to may have been the one's Rummie made before Congress last week... which I referred to in my post:
In Rummie's testimony before Congress last week he specifically stated that Iraqi insurgents being held at the Al Ghraib prison HAVE been accorded Prisoner of War status (as the Taliban in Afghanistan have been), but those held at GITMO have not. |
