On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> It is clear that Rumsfeld is playing games here to keep them from being
> classified as prisoners of war, because this status has numerous rights
> attached, among them writing home, right to not be tortured or or
> compelled to give more information than their own identity, etc.
Well, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, that last point might be the defensible core under the repulsive exterior. It doesn't seem unreasonable to say that the authorities should have the right to interrogate terrorists as least as much as much as they can common criminals -- and the POW statute forbids it. For soldiers, that makes sense. There are other ways to find out about the movement of whole armies, and there are fronts that grossly limit the possibilities. And besides, regular soldiers don't usually know much of value. Interrogation there would just be an excuse for bad treatment. But terrorism is different on all three counts. With terrorists caught on US soil, or who are US citizens, it's not a problem, you can just charge them in normal courts, like we did Walker, and treat them like criminals. But you can't do that if they are foreign nationals and you catch them in Afghanistan.
The odd point that sticks out from this point of view is that we all know this rule has been broken at many times and place and that POWs have been interrogated. So as a devil's advocate, one might argue that the problem with the US is not that they are disdainful of legal niceties, but that they are taking them unusually seriously. And one might make a case that the Geneva conventions should have an article that would clearly define terrorists, distinguish them from soldiers, and allow for their interrogation -- and that until then the law has a crucial gap in it that has to be filled in a makeshift manner.
</devil's advocate mode off>
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com