Pot, Meet Kettle
So read with that some poor US troops took a wrong turn and were ambushed and some captured and displayed on Iraqi TV. Apparently Bagman Rumsfeld thinks this is deplorable:
US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who admitted that the missing soldiers could have been captured, told CBS television that parading PoWs on television was “a violation of the Geneva Convention.” The US defence department added: “What they are doing is wrong. We are trying to get to the bottom of it.”
This is the same weasel who’s denying the thousands of captured Afghanis stewing in Halliburton-constructed cages in Guantanamo Bay, Cube any rights under the Geneva Conventions. He claims they are “unlawful combatants” and so he can piss all over them and exhibit them in shackles for the media. HRW and Amnesty have already said that his position is indefensible.
It seems that the Bush Gang is quick to dismiss international law and multilateralism when it doesn’t serve their interests (apparently, it’s then “irrelevant”) but ready to cry “Foul!” when others use the same tactics.
I am still waiting to see if the invading US forces use chemical agents first, as Rumsfeld has threatened, a course of action the Red Cross took the trouble to remind the US is “illegal” under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Red Cross didn’t say both sides were breaking the Geneva convention. It says Iraq was and it reminds both parties not to. It says that some of thought showing the Iraqi’s being searched was embarrassing. But it didn’t make a clear judgement. It did that with Iraq’s behavior.
Iraq also took away soldies personal effects. In the first gulf war they used cattle prods and beat up all the US POW. The US never used electric shock on Iraqi prisoners or beat them up.
There is no equivalency.
Which part of this are you not reading?
“In Kuwait, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) accused both sides of defying the Geneva Convention.
“The Geneva Convention completely prohibits publishing pictures of prisoners of war, as has been happening,” the ICRC’s Tamara al-Rifai told Reuters.