POW treatment

Louie Geiser
Stillwater

May 14, 2008 11:59 am

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I would like to pen a message of reassurance to all you queasy-tummied folks stewing over how we’re not doing right by the “prisoners of war” at Guantanamo Bay. A recent NewsPress letter writer excoriated the country (you and me) he loves to hate, this time because Gitmo violates the “Geneva Convention.”
He hasn’t even bothered to read the darn thing. If he had, he would have learned the people down there do not qualify for treatment as POWs.
The Geneva Convention has more than one purpose. Its most famous aim is to specify how POWs are to be treated, but it goes on to spell out exactly who qualifies as a “prisoner of war.”
First, it says you actually have to be a formal member of somebody’s army. It, in fact, specifically states that you must be “commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates.”
Second, you have to be wearing the uniform of that army. The actual wording is “having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance.” And third, you must be “carrying arms openly.”
Finally, the you must be “conducting … operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.” I would say that kidnappings, beheadings, murdering innocent women and children and car-bombing marketplaces are going to be iffy here.
If you fail to make the grade in any of these four categories, then you are not a “prisoner of war,” and you do not qualify for Geneva Convention treatment. In fact, it says that, if you do not meet the criteria for POW status, your captors are free to do with you just about whatever they please, up to and including shooting you as a spy.