PHOENIX, ARIZONA The following comments were reportedly aired on NPR on May 8, 2004 around 5:20PM EDT TO: Editor, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, WASHINGTON, DC Subject: Prof. Solis' comments on NPR, May 2, 2004 and our response
Dear Sir/Madam,
I've just listened to Cheryl Corley 's interview with Prof. Solis (sic) of Georgetown. His declaration that civilian contractors in Iraq are not responsible to anyone, making them literally above the law in both Iraq and in the U.S., is preposterous. His argument - that the Iraqi prisoners are not prisoners of war because there is no war going on there anymore - is even more preposterous. Then what do we call the 150 American soldiers who were killed there in the last month? Victims of non-belligerents? If so, why do we count their service in Iraq as "combat duty?"
There is more nonsense that also flows from Prof. Solis' arguments.
If abuses of the Iraqi prisoners were not war crimes because they
weren't enemy combatants, and thus not covered by the Geneva Convention,
then how would Prof. Solis justify the existence of the UN War Crimes
Tribunals? Under his definition of war, there were no wars in the
Balkans in the 1990s, where such crimes occurred; only civil strife or
insurrection.
Finally, President Bush declared an open-ended
"War on Terrorism" shortly after 9/11. He justified the
war in Iraq on the same grounds. Doesn't it stand to reason,
therefore, that any prisoner taken during such war is a prisoner of war?
As to the reason we are using private contractors to do military jobs,
check out my article "Privatizing
War." http://www.truthinmedia.org/truthinmedia/Bulletins2004/1-3.html.
In the case of interrogation (read torture) of enemy prisoners, there is
one additional reason that Prof. Solis did accurately describe. It
puts them above the law. So they can commit crimes with impunity
for which our military personnel could have been prosecuted.
What is Prof. Solis a professor of? Unmitigated Nonsense 101?
Bob Djurdjevic
Editor
Truth in Media
Phoenix, Arizona
Web: www.truthinmedia.org
P.S. NPR's "All Things Considered" host said today (May 8) that Prof. Solis had issued a retraction. Now he is saying that the U.S. military personnel could be prosecuted for war crimes under the Geneva Convention. "Ask, and you shall receive"...
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