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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (134611)	5/27/2004 7:42:13 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<And now that the Taliban ARE NOT LONGER the government of Afghanistan, they are illegal combatants> That's a very creative interpretation, even more creative than what the Bush Administration says. So, if the U.S. overthrows a government, then the soldiers we capture get re-classified as illegal combatants (= people with zero rights)???? But they were POWs when they were captured??? No, this is nonsense. The plain wording of the Geneva Conventions says otherwise. If they were POWs when captured, they remain POWs. And the conquering nation doesn't get to unilaterally decide who is "legitimate" and who isn't. The article you linked describes the hair-splitting creative legalisms our government is engaged in. Our government has made, in practice, no distinction between any of the people we captured in Afghanistan. All of them, whether Taliban or Al Queda or unknown, were called illegal combatants. None have been called POWs. The only real distinctions the U.S. government makes, is based on their nationality. Taliban with U.S. passports get a trial. Taliban with British passports get released after a couple of years. If you don't have a government to speak for you, or if that government has no influence in Washington, you get a life sentence in a cage, with periodic torture (since the techniques used in Iraq were taught by people with experience at Guantanamo, it is reasonable to assume the same things are happening there). <The Geneva conventions are a contract between states. And for any contract to be valid, it must be sustained and enforced by both parties.> So, the fact that our soldiers have been caught torturing and killing prisoners (37 admitted to, so far), means that now, every other nation on earth is free to do the same to our soldiers, if they want to? We have violated the Geneva Conventions, so it's OK now for everybody else to reciprocate? How would you feel about it, if the newspaper had a picture of Ms. England, naked, with a leash around her neck, and a grinning Jihadist holding the leash? I'm hoping that other nations will be more civilized than we are, and not reciprocate.