Saddam's men filmed murder of two soldiers
” IRAQI officers loyal to Saddam Hussain filmed their cold-blooded murder of two British bomb disposal officers who were captured after a roadside ambush.
An inquest was told that Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, thought that they were being taken to hospital for treatment, but instead they were moved to a compound run by Saddam’s military intelligence.
The harrowing ordeal lasted for hours until Iraqi agents killed the pair. The soldiers were buried in a shallow grave.”
I believe that the U.S. and the U.K. are the only two major powers in the world that have demonstrably proven they honor the Geneva Convention and in the case of the U.S., exceed those conventions. It appears that the only benefit has been bragging rights and even those are discounted by most of the world and America’s liberals.
When I was a kid I worked for a German who owed a dress shop in Ft. Walton Bch, FL who had been a PoW in WWII and after he was released applied to immigrate to the U.S. because he loved it and the way he was treated.
I suspect OT and Shapely both remember GC classes when they joined the military and I certainly recall the refresher classes and Rules of Engagement classes before the 1st Gulf War and going into Somalia.
The incident above highlight the barbarity most signatories of the GC revert to when they are actually expected to uphold them.
The British soldiers were captured during open hostilities and in uniform, and should have received POW status. Instead, Saddam's officer corps decided to execute them, and to film their crime as well.
Ironically Iraq signed the “original” GC in 1956 but never adopted the first of two "Protocols" which were "adopted" in 1977 and which expanded the definition of a POW to include pretty much anyone with a weapon (or even bad intent) who gets caught during a military operation. Under this definition the so-called "enemy combatants" picked up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq would clearly be covered.
Fortunately, the United States never signed either Protocol I or II. Neither did Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iraq, which pretty much covers most of the places we have been picking these guys up.
Countries refused to sign these Protocols because they effectively extend the rights afforded to POWs in The Third Geneva Convention to guerillas including those who would operate out of uniform within civilian populations (as has been the case in Iraq).
Given that these Protocols were promulgated while Jimmy Carter was in office - and that he is such a strong proponent of them - you'd think he'd remember that the U.S. Senate told him to stick those Protocols in his ear when he was President. It's worth nothing that this was during a time when the Democrats controlled the Executive branch and both houses of Congress - even they wouldn't go along with Carter's absurdist utopian vision. To this day, these protocols have been left untouched by the United States through five presidencies - Democrats and Republicans alike.
Treating the GC as some sort of talisman that will ward off the brutality of tyrants allows people to fall prey to a utopianism that simply does not exist in modern warfare between any nations except those in the West -- and since the advent of democracy, those nations do not war with each other. And even at that, Germany certainly qualified as a Western country during World War II and still dispensed with the GC in all but the thinnest veneer of appearances.
The coroner's finding and the film of the execution does bring up an interesting question. Will Britain charge Saddam Hussein and the army officers in custody with war crimes? Saddam likely will not survive the trials he already faces with the Iraqis, but the British should consider formal charges against Saddam and his henchmen for this crime. If people want to invoke the GC to limit the options of Western nations in defending themselves, then the Western nations need to prosecute the enemies we face for violating them as well. If the British feel their invocation in this case would serve no purpose, then why abide by the GC at all?
