>There was a very scholarly short essay >posted here a while ago, writtem by
a
>military lawyer, that covered most of the >bases. The long and short of it
>was that "unlawful combatants," as the US >classifies the aQ/T "detainees"
>are not covered by the Geneva >convention. The US does not consider >them
to be covered by constitutional >rights, despite the fact that these
generally >apply, on the text of the document, to >"persons," not just
citizens. I think
>what this means is that to the extent that >they are protected by any laws,
>they are covered by the UN Charter, to >which the US is of course a
>signatory, and which prohibits, among other >things, torture, and by the
>customary law of international relations. >Practivally speaking they have
no
>rights, and the US can do with them what it >damn well pleases
If you kill someone in combat or bomb them because they are citizens of a country and got in the way (or were, in fact, the main target--Dresden, Hiroshima, etc.), you are not doing a heck of a lot for their human rights anyway.
But the weakness of the argument is: having captured these guys alive, by what right does the US decree them to be non-prisoners/unlawful combatants? If they are such, then they ought to be such under Afghan or Cuban law. I don't think anyone in the UK is brave enough to touch this, but perhaps some in the IRA can sympathize. Of course more than their current treatment, these prisoners had better start worrying about the firing squads which await them.
Charles Jannuzi