Saturday, June 17, 2006

Does the Convention Hold?

Ok, I'm officially sick of hearing people criticize the Bush administration for not upholding the Geneva conventions. Let's pause from partisan rheoteric for a second and ask what the basis of the Geneva conventions is. Nearly 200 countries around the world agreed to abide by certain norms for treating prisoners beonging to other signatories. If you missed that, the key phrase is "other signatories". No terrorist group has ever signed the Geneva convention, and most of their activities involve targeting of innocent civilians and torture that goes against the spirit and letter of the convention. Finding fault with the US for not abiding by the Geneva convention is like criticizing a state for failing to keep up a ceasefire agreement the enemy didn't sign!

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