That's a distinction worth pondering the next time you hear Iraq war critics carp at the U.S. refusal to apply Geneva Convention privileges to enemy combatants. The Convention extends those privileges to combatants who abide by the laws it sets for war, including the treatment of prisoners.
Combatants who fail to obey those laws--by not wearing distinctive military insignia or targeting civilians--are not entitled to its privileges. If they were, the very purpose of the Convention would be rendered a nonsense. And this is why the U.S. has refused Geneva privileges to the enemy combatants at Guantanamo, which we hope is an argument heeded by the Supreme Court as it decides the Hamdan case.
Well said and followed by this:
Meantime, the U.S. military continues to examine allegations that Marines killed 24 civilians in the town of Haditha last November. Pentagon investigators have also uncovered evidence of detainee abuse by U.S. Special Forces in early 2004--just as the Army was the first to disclose the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib.
For some, all this is just more evidence of inveterate U.S. barbarity or the criminal abuses made possible by Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. In fact, it testifies to a U.S. military and executive branch willing to investigate, disclose and prosecute errant military behavior, whatever the military or political price. That's something Mr. Murtha and his fellow-travelers in Congress and the media might not recognize. But a majority of Iraqis do, which is why, in the battle against the killers of Privates Tucker and Menchaca, they line up to fight on our side.
Read it all and pass it on to everyone who supports the type of people who did what was done to Pvts. Thomas L. Tucker and Kristian Menchaca.
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