Why Do They Hate Us ?

Critics see hypocrisy in U.S. demands that Iraq treat captured
soldiers according to Geneva Conventions

By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Critics are asking how the United States
can demand the protection of the Geneva Conventions for soldiers
captured in Iraq while not fully complying in its treatment of
terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The United States is "giving some excuse to the Iraqis" to mistreat
prisoners, said Khalid al-Odah, a Kuwaiti whose 25-year-old son has
been held in Guantanamo for more than a year without charge or
access to a lawyer.

"I see that as relatively a double standard," al-Odah said by
telephone Wednesday from Kuwait.

He isn't alone in suggesting the U.S. government's position of
calling Guantanamo detainees "enemy combatants" and not prisoners
of war is contradictory and could backfire.

"The administration is looking somewhat hypocritical in the eyes of
many people," said Robert K. Goldman, an expert on the laws of war
and professor at American University in Washington. "This issue,
sooner or later, was going to come back to haunt us."

The military maintains treatment is humane for some 660 men from
42 countries held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida terror network
or Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s former Taliban regime.

"They're detained because they're considered a threat to the United
States," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman at Guantanamo.

Images of U.S. POWs on Iraqi television have drawn criticism. But
"the United States is not in a very good moral or legal position to
make this complaint," said Michael Ratner, a lawyer for relatives
of two Australian and two British prisoners.

It was the U.S. Department of Defense that published the first
pictures of detainees arriving at Guantanamo - arousing outrage
even among some friendly governments with images of handcuffed men
blinded by blacked-out goggles, wearing ear muffs and surgical masks.

Officials first allowed journalists to photograph detainees through
chain-link fences but in April moved them to a permanent prison
where screens obscure journalists' view. Recognizable photos of
faces were never allowed, with the military citing the conventions.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld noted the Geneva
Conventions forbid showing or humiliating POWs and said it was
something the United States does not do.

Military officials say photographs of detainees give a distorted
view and that they are abiding by most of the Third Geneva
Convention of 1949 governing POW treatment.

Officials deny using torture and say detainees are interrogated
humanely, allowed to practice their religion and given good medical
care.

Prisoners released from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan this month
said they were beaten, deprived of sleep or made to stay naked on
a sheet of ice. U.S. military coroners also have ruled that two
prisoners who died at Bagram were beaten.

In Guantanamo, the military moved 20 detainees into a new
psychiatric wing Monday for closer observation after a series of
suicide attempts.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has urged the
military to clarify the detainees' legal status, saying each is
a POW unless a tribunal rules otherwise.

U.S. officials respond that detainees aren't "lawful" combatants.

The conventions say POWs should be sent home "after the cessation
of active hostilities," but Pentagon spokesman Maj. Ted Wadsworth
said when the conflict ends "has yet to be determined."

The conventions also say POWs should be sentenced in "the same
courts" as U.S. soldiers, suggesting courts martial instead of
proposed secretive military tribunals.

Al-Odah, who backed U.S. forces during the 1991 Gulf War and
believes his son is innocent, said the 12 Kuwaiti prisoners have
missed much back home, including the death of another's father,
who suffered a heart attack Tuesday.

"The United States government should stick to its principles,"
he said. "It is a free country, it is a nation of rule of law -
and this is not happening now."


AP World, Wed Mar 26, 1:03 PM ET

this is so terrible... how can we treat each other like that?