From Geneva to Baghdad: The Rules of War

Playing semantics with how to label opponents of an armed conflict CANNOT get you out of legal obligation to The Geneva Conventions.

The idea that somehow "terrorist" or "enemy combatants" are not within the purview of the Convention is nonsense. The Convention covers "saboteurs," "agent provocateurs," "guerrillas," "spies" and other "irregular" combatants. This does not take a scholar to recognize this, however, I feel the Mainstream Media has once again dropped the ball (as they admit to have during this entire 8 year political era) by not mentioning this fact that contradicts official government rhetoric. However, they've become so sycophantic towards those in power, that unless another person in powerful loudly declares such facts, they will not bother to mention this fact, though they will acknowledge that they had known about the fact, but not reported on it, because "no one else was saying it" excuse!

This is nothing new.


"You get more flies with honey than vinegar."

During the congressional hearings, interrogators, hidden for their protections testified that in fact, what broke Khalid Sheik Mohammed was simply bringing the prisoner sugarless cookies when the interrogator realized he was diabetic. Then he realized that Americans were civilized and was willing to cooperate. This has been shown numerous times throughout history.

Torture tends to harden the person being interrogated and makes them unwilling to cooperate with what seems an uncivilized and savage society that would allow such monstrous behavior.

Torture has existed for a very long time and it has always had one purpose. To force a confession that the interrogator wants. We now know from internal documents and testimony that the Bush Administration was pressuring interrogators to get the prisoners to admit to being Al Qaeda, that there had in fact been WMD's and other attempts to try and validate the lies that convinced the naive that we should invade a sovereign country in violation of international law. But in fact if you look at the policy (exposed by Colin Powell's State Department documents) you see that they had demanded army units to simply pick EVERYONE up in the vicinity of any significant fighting. They were swept up because they happened to be in the area. Knowing this Powell addressed the administration's insistence that those swept up and housed at Guantanamo Bay were the worst of the worst. Powell argued nothing could be farther from the truth and that most of these were probably completely innocent. Further constantly changing numbers of supposed combatants that were once again met on the battlefield have also been debunked. All elements of pretty much classic, by-the-book propaganda.

In the Nuremberg Principles, the greatest crime the Nazi's had perpetrated was "crimes against the peace." This meant that they launched what they called a "pre-emptive" attack on Poland.

Furthermore, it is the supreme law of the land that whatever International Treaty is ratified by our Senate becomes A PART OF OUR CONSTITUTION and must be upheld. For an executive to not carry out this legal mandate is IN VIOLATION OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS. A student reporter from a college paper had the gall to ask this question at a press conference and was never allowed back in the room.

"Signed by more than 150 nations, the Geneva Conventions set a code of behavior for warring parties." Discovery Spotlight.