{"article":{"id":40700,"heading":"WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE MR BUSH?","author":"Voice of the Daily Mirror","created":"2003-03-26 11:58:16","modified":"2005-08-15 01:20:16","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:20:16","article":"

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)

<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/allnews\/page.cfm?objectid=12773044&method=full&siteid=50143","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","summary":"THE outrage and anger over the treatment of US prisoners of war by Iraq is very real (!!??). Their brutal and humiliating treatment - recorded in detail for television - is profoundly shocking.But not everyone is entitled to be outraged. The warmongers in the White House are not.Little more than a year ago, there were other prisoners of war. As United States forces swept victoriously through Afghanistan, they seized hundreds of men. ","numcomment":4,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2003\/03\/00030ae5-0835-1c4c-a5b980c328ec0182.jpg","filesize":"11.0 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2003\/03\/40700.php","image":{"original":"\/uploads\/2003\/03\/00030ae5-0835-1c4c-a5b980c328ec0182.jpg","small":"\/uploads\/2003\/03\/00030ae5-0835-1c4c-a5b980c328ec0182.jpgthumb.jpg"}},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":40701,"heading":"One rule for them","article":"Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries \r\nfoul. What about Guantanamo Bay? \r\n\r\n\r\nTuesday March 25, 2003 \r\nThe Guardian \r\n\r\nSuddenly, the government of the United States has \r\ndiscovered the virtues of international law. It \r\nmay be waging an illegal war against a sovereign \r\nstate; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty \r\nwhich impedes its attempts to run the world, but \r\nwhen five of its captured soldiers were paraded \r\nin front of the Iraqi television cameras on \r\nSunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence \r\nsecretary, immediately complained that "it is \r\nagainst the Geneva convention to show photographs \r\nof prisoners of war in a manner that is \r\nhumiliating for them". \r\nHe is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the \r\nthird convention, concerning the treatment of \r\nprisoners, insists that they "must at all times \r\nbe protected... against insults and public \r\ncuriosity". This may number among the less \r\nheinous of the possible infringements of the laws \r\nof war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in \r\n1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you \r\nshould expect to be prosecuted for war crimes. \r\n\r\nThis being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his \r\nback. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause \r\nof legal warfare is, as head of the defence \r\ndepartment, responsible for a series of crimes \r\nsufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him \r\naway for the rest of his natural life. \r\n\r\nHis prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where \r\n641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are \r\nheld, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the \r\nthird convention. The US government broke the \r\nfirst of these (article 13) as soon as the \r\nprisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as \r\nthe Iraqis have done, on television. In this \r\ncase, however, they were not encouraged to \r\naddress the cameras. They were kneeling on the \r\nground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing \r\nblacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of \r\narticle 18, they had been stripped of their own \r\nclothes and deprived of their possessions. They \r\nwere then interned in a penitentiary (against \r\narticle 22), where they were denied proper mess \r\nfacilities (26), canteens (28), religious \r\npremises (34), opportunities for physical \r\nexercise (38), access to the text of the \r\nconvention (41), freedom to write to their \r\nfamilies (70 and 71) and parcels of food and \r\nbooks (72). \r\n\r\nThey were not "released and repatriated without \r\ndelay after the cessation of active hostilities" \r\n(118), because, the US authorities say, their \r\ninterrogation might, one day, reveal interesting \r\ninformation about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that \r\ncaptives are obliged to give only their name, \r\nrank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may \r\nbe inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from \r\nthem information of any kind whatever". In the \r\nhope of breaking them, however, the authorities \r\nhave confined them to solitary cells and \r\nsubjected them to what is now known as "torture \r\nlite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to \r\nbright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the \r\nprisoners have sought to kill themselves, by \r\nsmashing their heads against the walls or trying \r\nto slash their wrists with plastic cutlery. \r\n\r\nThe US government claims that these men are not \r\nsubject to the Geneva conventions, as they are \r\nnot "prisoners of war", but "unlawful \r\ncombatants". The same claim could be made, with \r\nrather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US \r\nsoldiers who illegally invaded their country. But \r\nthis redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 \r\nof the third convention, under which people \r\ndetained as suspected members of a militia (the \r\nTaliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be \r\nregarded as prisoners of war. \r\n\r\nEven if there is doubt about how such people \r\nshould be classified, article 5 insists that they \r\n"shall enjoy the protection of the present \r\nconvention until such time as their status has \r\nbeen determined by a competent tribunal". But \r\nwhen, earlier this month, lawyers representing 16 \r\nof them demanded a court hearing, the US court of \r\nappeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not \r\nsovereign US territory, the men have no \r\nconstitutional rights. Many of these prisoners \r\nappear to have been working in Afghanistan as \r\nteachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US \r\ngovernment either tried or released them, its \r\nembarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to \r\nlight. \r\n\r\nYou would hesitate to describe these prisoners as \r\nlucky, unless you knew what had happened to some \r\nof the other men captured by the Americans and \r\ntheir allies in Afghanistan. On November 21 2001, \r\naround 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun \r\ncivilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern \r\nAlliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. \r\nMany of them have never been seen again. \r\n\r\nAs Jamie Doran's film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of \r\nDeath records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, \r\nof them were loaded into container lorries at \r\nQala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on \r\nNovember 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the \r\nlorries were left to stand in the sun for several \r\ndays. At length, they departed for Sheberghan \r\nprison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of \r\nwhom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation, \r\nstarted banging on the sides of the trucks. \r\nDostum's men stopped the convoy and \r\nmachine-gunned the containers. When they arrived \r\nat Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead. \r\n\r\nThe US special forces running the prison watched \r\nthe bodies being unloaded. They instructed \r\nDostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite \r\npictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a \r\nNorthern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I \r\nwas a witness when an American soldier broke one \r\nprisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they \r\nwanted. We had no power to stop them." Another \r\nsoldier alleged: "They took the prisoners outside \r\nand beat them up, and then returned them to the \r\nprison. But sometimes they were never returned, \r\nand they disappeared." \r\n\r\nMany of the survivors were loaded back in the \r\ncontainers with the corpses, then driven to a \r\nplace in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the \r\npresence of up to 40 US special forces, the \r\nliving and the dead were dumped into ditches. \r\nAnyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper \r\nDie Zeit investigated the claims and concluded \r\nthat: "No one doubted that the Americans had \r\ntaken part. Even at higher levels there are no \r\ndoubts on this issue." The US group Physicians \r\nfor Human Rights visited the places identified by \r\nDoran's witnesses and found they "all... \r\ncontained human remains consistent with their \r\ndesignation as possible grave sites". \r\n\r\nIt should not be necessary to point out that \r\nhospitality of this kind also contravenes the \r\nthird Geneva convention, which prohibits \r\n"violence to life and person, in particular \r\nmurder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment \r\nand torture", as well as extra-judicial \r\nexecution. Donald Rumsfeld's department, assisted \r\nby a pliant media, has done all it can to \r\nsuppress Jamie Doran's film, while General Dostum \r\nhas begun to assassinate his witnesses. \r\n\r\nIt is not hard, therefore, to see why the US \r\ngovernment fought first to prevent the \r\nestablishment of the international criminal \r\ncourt, and then to ensure that its own citizens \r\nare not subject to its jurisdiction. The five \r\nsoldiers dragged in front of the cameras \r\nyesterday should thank their lucky stars that \r\nthey are prisoners not of the American forces \r\nfighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric \r\nand inhuman" Iraqis. \r\n\r\nwww.monbiot.com \r\n\r\n","author":"George Monbiot","parent_id":40700,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-03-26 11:59:50","modified":"2003-03-26 11:59:50","fileurl":""},{"id":40706,"heading":"Idiots","article":"You people are just idiots.","author":"Eric","parent_id":40700,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-03-26 13:03:05","modified":"2003-03-26 13:03:05","fileurl":""},{"id":40760,"heading":"A Complaint","article":"We the International Brotherhood of Idiots take great umbrage with the characterization of these people as 'idiots'.\r\n\r\nI can assure you that these people are not real idiots, merely posing as idiots to increase their popularity or street credibility.\r\n\r\nJudging by the content of thier posts, I would have to classify them as 'window-licking retards'.\r\n\r\nThank you.","author":"International Brotherhood of Idiots","parent_id":40700,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-03-26 16:59:39","modified":"2003-03-26 16:59:39","fileurl":""},{"id":40820,"heading":"Me","article":"I am the father of all idiots.","author":"Eric","parent_id":40700,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-03-26 18:42:22","modified":"2003-03-26 18:42:22","fileurl":""}]}