These prisoners were transported to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. They were blindfolded and shackled. And their plight was gloatingly recorded by official US photographers to be circulated around the world.

The treatment of American prisoners of war in Iraq is in flagrant breach of the Geneva Convention. But so is the treatment of Afghani prisoners in Camp X-Ray.

They were humiliated and their humiliation recorded so that the White House could take vengeance for the atrocities of September 11.

The US did not stop there in defying the rules of war. It has admitted that almost all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were tortured.

There is no difference between breaches of the Geneva Convention committed by America and Iraq. But the White House thinks there is.

Mr Rumsfeld says it's "illegal to do things to PoWs that are humiliating to those prisoners".

And a White House spokesman said yesterday there is a difference between the war on terrorism and "this additional conflict" in Iraq.

In other words, this US administration doesn't consider it is bound by other people's laws. It can do what it likes and expects others to do what it likes, too.



To yearn for vengeance is an understandable human emotion. But we are entitled to expect civilised people to control it. Particularly the people who run the most powerful nation on earth.

Only yesterday, 19 Camp X-Ray prisoners were released. They had been incarcerated, humiliated and abused for more than a year. Yet now the US admits they are innocent.

What this White House did at Guantanamo Bay was an indication of how it would behave over Iraq.

It ignored the wishes of the United Nations. It defied international law. It invaded a sovereign state simply because it wanted to and had the military might.

That does not mean we shouldn't feel compassion and pity for the troops who have been captured by the Iraqis. It is not their fault they are in Iraq.

They, like their comrades who have died, are paying the price of their leaders' actions.

The Iraqis would have dealt with them cruelly even without the way the Americans behaved at Guantanamo. They treated our own airmen similarly in 1991.

If the White House had followed the Geneva Convention, it might not have helped these prisoners of war. But it would have given America an essential moral superiority.

Remember, we were told by President Bush and Tony Blair that this was a moral war. A crusade to rid the world of a tyrannical, bloodthirsty despot.

Yet just about every rule and law that could be broken by the US has been.

Mr Blair cannot be happy. He has allied himself with a White House administration that steamrollers over all opposition, defying the rules and ignoring the relationships that could make this a better world.

War is at times a necessary evil, though this is not one of them. And some of its worst excesses can be eased by applying rules of decency and civilisation.

The world should condemn every nation and every leader who flagrantly breaches those rules.

Whether it is Iraq or the USA, Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush.

There cannot be one rule for America and another for the rest of the world. That way lies anarchy and the collapse of civilisation.

(FOTO HYPOCRISY: The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are masked, shackled and forced to kneel)

Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries

foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?



Tuesday March 25, 2003

The Guardian

Suddenly, the government of the United States has

discovered the virtues of international law. It

may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign

state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty

which impedes its attempts to run the world, but

when five of its captured soldiers were paraded

in front of the Iraqi television cameras on

Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence

secretary, immediately complained that "it is

against the Geneva convention to show photographs

of prisoners of war in a manner that is

humiliating for them".

He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the

third convention, concerning the treatment of

prisoners, insists that they "must at all times

be protected... against insults and public

curiosity". This may number among the less

heinous of the possible infringements of the laws

of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in

1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you

should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his

back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause

of legal warfare is, as head of the defence

department, responsible for a series of crimes

sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him

away for the rest of his natural life.

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where

641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are

held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the

third convention. The US government broke the

first of these (article 13) as soon as the

prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as

the Iraqis have done, on television. In this

case, however, they were not encouraged to

address the cameras. They were kneeling on the

ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing

blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of

article 18, they had been stripped of their own

clothes and deprived of their possessions. They

were then interned in a penitentiary (against

article 22), where they were denied proper mess

facilities (26), canteens (28), religious

premises (34), opportunities for physical

exercise (38), access to the text of the

convention (41), freedom to write to their

families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and

books (72).

They were not "released and repatriated without

delay after the cessation of active hostilities"

(118), because, the US authorities say, their

interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting

information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that

captives are obliged to give only their name,

rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may

be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from

them information of any kind whatever". In the

hope of breaking them, however, the authorities

have confined them to solitary cells and

subjected them to what is now known as "torture

lite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to

bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the

prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by

smashing their heads against the walls or trying

to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

The US government claims that these men are not

subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are

not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful

combatants". The same claim could be made, with

rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US

soldiers who illegally invaded their country. But

this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4

of the third convention, under which people

detained as suspected members of a militia (the

Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be

regarded as prisoners of war.

Even if there is doubt about how such people

should be classified, article 5 insists that they

"shall enjoy the protection of the present

convention until such time as their status has

been determined by a competent tribunal". But

when, earlier this month, lawyers representing 16

of them demanded a court hearing, the US court of

appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not

sovereign US territory, the men have no

constitutional rights. Many of these prisoners

appear to have been working in Afghanistan as

teachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US

government either tried or released them, its

embarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to

light.

You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as

lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some

of the other men captured by the Americans and

their allies in Afghanistan. On November 21 2001,

around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun

civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern

Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Many of them have never been seen again.

As Jamie Doran's film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of

Death records, some hundreds, possibly thousands,

of them were loaded into container lorries at

Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on

November 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the

lorries were left to stand in the sun for several

days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan

prison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of

whom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation,

started banging on the sides of the trucks.

Dostum's men stopped the convoy and

machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived

at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead.

The US special forces running the prison watched

the bodies being unloaded. They instructed

Dostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite

pictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a

Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I

was a witness when an American soldier broke one

prisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they

wanted. We had no power to stop them." Another

soldier alleged: "They took the prisoners outside

and beat them up, and then returned them to the

prison. But sometimes they were never returned,

and they disappeared."

Many of the survivors were loaded back in the

containers with the corpses, then driven to a

place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the

presence of up to 40 US special forces, the

living and the dead were dumped into ditches.

Anyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper

Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded

that: "No one doubted that the Americans had

taken part. Even at higher levels there are no

doubts on this issue." The US group Physicians

for Human Rights visited the places identified by

Doran's witnesses and found they "all...

contained human remains consistent with their

designation as possible grave sites".

It should not be necessary to point out that

hospitality of this kind also contravenes the

third Geneva convention, which prohibits

"violence to life and person, in particular

murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment

and torture", as well as extra-judicial

execution. Donald Rumsfeld's department, assisted

by a pliant media, has done all it can to

suppress Jamie Doran's film, while General Dostum

has begun to assassinate his witnesses.

It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US

government fought first to prevent the

establishment of the international criminal

court, and then to ensure that its own citizens

are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five

soldiers dragged in front of the cameras

yesterday should thank their lucky stars that

they are prisoners not of the American forces

fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric

and inhuman" Iraqis.

www.monbiot.com

You people are just idiots.

We the International Brotherhood of Idiots take great umbrage with the characterization of these people as 'idiots'.

I can assure you that these people are not real idiots, merely posing as idiots to increase their popularity or street credibility.

Judging by the content of thier posts, I would have to classify them as 'window-licking retards'.

Thank you.

I am the father of all idiots.