Bye Bye Geneva

So the Pentagon is refusing to accord their Afghani prisoners POW status. A cynic would say this makes it easier for them to torture, without interference from those annoying Geneva Convention folks. But this is exactly the mistake the Brits made in the 1970s with Irish Republican prisoners, who then went on blanket protests and hunger strikes to secure “special status”, ie, political recognition. This worked out badly for the Brits, because they were then seen as the bad guys. Instead of focusing on issues of criminality and/or innocence, media attention gets focused on the “plight” of these prisoners. Some of the Irish hunger strikers even managed to get elected as Uk MPs, only to die of starvation while in office. This was a public relations disaster for the Brits.