Torture, or Just Kinda Rude?

Imagine for a moment some ordinary citizen committing these acts on another ordinary citizen and blaming it on someone else telling them that it was okay, or ordering them to do it. Does that make the person actually committing the crime exempt from prosecution? Several cases can be cited to the contrary.

Article Four of part one of the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war clearly qualify the detainees in these prisons as prisoners of war. This refutes the theory that terrorists held in detention are not prisoners of war, and thus are not subject to the same protections.

President Obama has concerns about how a journalist will be treated in an Iranian prison after being convicted of espionage, and there are concerns about the fate of two U.S. journalists who have been captured by North Korea. How can we possibly be so hypocritical as to request that these prisoners be released? One has had a trial, which is more than we can say about the detainees at Guantanamo and other U.S. prisons around the world. Iran and North Korea are not our friends or allies. They have very different governments and philosophies than the U.S. Yet we are expecting them to take a higher moral ground than we have displayed. Now don’t get me wrong, I would like these journalists to be released as well. But they did go into another country and break their laws. I’m not comparing their actions to actions of terrorists, but I am comparing our expectations of Iran and North Korea to the way the Bush Administration approached the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Its hypocrisy, its sickening, and its not what the American people want or expect.