--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:I know you are an avid defender of, to the rest of the world, untennable positions when it comes to the rights of your government in respect to other countries. I also know that you are an just as avid critic of other countries who apply exactly the same logic and reasoning for exactly the same kind of measures taken against US citizens but come on... you cannot be serious? Your government had the right to torture civilians at will because they weren't official combatants and because they had the extreme bad luck to be in US occupied teritory? Not even gonne mention the legallity of that occupation.
If this is true, then it is an extremely serious manner. It would be admitting deliberate, systematic, authorized violations of the Geneva Convention. That is not just the actions of a few bad apples. It seems to me to be high level illegal orders. I'll stand being corrected by someone who better understands the military, but I cannot see how a general could legally order his reports to delibrately violate a treaty agreed to by the United States.
Dan M.
I don't know the details (am still at work at 11:00pm, so I'm not exactly following the news) but it's not clear that insurgents captured in Iraq are covered by the Geneva Conventions, for the same reasons we've gone over on this list on several occasions.
In my opinion the torture (because that is what it was) of people who haven't officially, in all openness and through due process been established as criminals is beyond any form of humane conduct no matter under which convention you will or will not classify it and as such cannot be defended and should be punished in an international or Iraqui court of law. If these victims would have at least been officially established as being involved in actions against the occupation forces it would have been marginally understandable and slightly more justifiable although I would still consider it no less dispicable.
And then the US still doesn't want its's soldiers to be tried under international law in a well established international court of law. Makes perfect sense after this.
Sonja :o) ROU: Please tell me I got it wrong
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