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June 22, 2006

Twisted wingnuttery

For those who think there aren't some serious problems within the US military, think again. When there are groups of our soldiers murdering innocent civilians, something has obviously gone terribly wrong.

But in a weirdly pretzel twisted fashion--conservatives are using these wretched acts to justify acts of torture against detainees:

The Pentagon yesterday announced the names of seven Marines and a Navy corpsman charged with the April 26 kidnapping and murder of a 52-year-old Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania. The accusations are grave and, if proved, will almost certainly lead to severe sentences. We suspect no parallel process is taking place among Iraqi insurgents for the weekend murders near Yusufiya of U.S. soldiers Thomas L. Tucker and Kristian Menchaca.

That's a distinction worth pondering the next time you hear Iraq war critics carp at the U.S. refusal to apply Geneva Convention privileges to enemy combatants. The Convention extends those privileges to combatants who abide by the laws it sets for war, including the treatment of prisoners.

Combatants who fail to obey those laws--by not wearing distinctive military insignia or targeting civilians--are not entitled to its privileges. If they were, the very purpose of the Convention would be rendered a nonsense. And this is why the U.S. has refused Geneva privileges to the enemy combatants at Guantanamo, which we hope is an argument heeded by the Supreme Court as it decides the Hamdan case.

This is what the bloodlust war crowd is now reduced to. The twisting it takes to justify this is crazy.

This person is actually saying that its perfectly acceptable for the US to engage in barbaric treatment of detainees because when it happens outside the chain of command--our guys are harshly punished. But as long as its done through orders and policy, there's no problem.

If this was applied equally--it means that no person who's beheaded or tortured Americans can be tried for war crimes as long as they did it as a matter of policy or within their chain of command.

In the name of defending the President and the whacked out "war on terror" policies, these nutters are willing to justify this murder.

Posted by Carla at June 22, 2006 08:21 AM