March 23, 2003

Call me unconventional  

Rumsfeld and his generals are making a lot of noise about the Geneva Conventions for US POWs. The specific complaint - that the Iraqis were humiliating them by asking them questions and showing them on television - seems a little thin. But the question I have is how this squares with our treatment of Taliban POWs, who as I recall were blindfolded in outdoor pens at Guantanamo, and against the Geneva Convention.

Doubtless someone will condemn the analogy, since the captured afghans were "terrorists" - and ultimately I think that's how the US escaped its responsbilities, by labelling them "illegal combatants." But I think what makes something like this a convention in the first place is that it's applied uniformly - and the US failure to toe the line with the Taliban (regardless of the particularities) renders the declarations today a little flat.

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