Other than it allows you to propagate, in an underhanded and perfectly camouflaged fashion the common right wing meme that AI is a bunch of nazis.

Yes, the irony is rather thick at this point.

... Curt Goering, the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA ...

Sometimes irony is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Not that it has any real significance.

Um, Steve, did you actually - you know - READ the linked McClatchy piece or did you - you know - just ASSUME you already knew what it said from reading the small outtake from Jame's post?

In addition to plenty of the quotes in the piece coming from Bush himself, as Tlaloc points out

Still, some groups, such as the bipartisan One: The Campaign to Make Poverty History, praised Bush for calling for a recommitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Total quotes:

Bush: 8

AI: 1

Bush Supporter: 1

Linda Jamison: 1

note that Jamison's quote isn't negative and hasn't anything to do with the "hypocrisy".

Because this story was a flagrant hidden agenda editorial.

Actually, it's because you simply didn't read the piece and projected your own biases onto it that you came to your conclusion.

Quite stunning to see such a "classic case" of bias projection right here in the middle of a discussion about such issues.

Bravo.

Given the above auditing, it's pretty hard to see how James comes to his conclusion regarding the "classic" nature of the McClatchy piece. Perhaps he can enlighten us as to his analysis techniques and what measurements he uses to come to the conclusions he has.

Yes, but I was always taught that the press was not to bring their own prejudices into their reporting and that they demonstrate this by reporting both sides of a story. I'm sure there were responsible representives that did not view Bush's words as hypocritical. Why weren't they quoted?

Because the president himself stands as the quote for "his" side. Duh.

No. It was a big event, it was a prominent event and it was an event where getting quotes from the people they did was perfectly appropriate.

Yes, but I was always taught that the press was not to bring their own prejudices into their reporting and that they demonstrate this by reporting both sides of a story. I'm sure there were responsible representives that did not view Bush's words as hypocritical. Why weren't they quoted? Because this story was a flagrant hidden agenda editorial.

Wait, maybe I'm too hasty or harsh. Maybe the author was limited in the space he had to write his story and he just ran out before he could enter the other quotes.

James' headline should stand as is.

Bush and co. have (apparently) deliberately refrained from calling them insurgents precisely because it would be an admission by them that the protections set forth in Protocol II apply.

The civilians caught up in indiscriminate raids or sold to the US by warlords are due more protections under the Geneva Conventions than are the insurgents. Again labeling them "enemy combatants" is being used as a strategy to avoid giving them the rights they are due under the Conventions.

In short, neither group is receiving the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed under the Conventions we agreed to abide by.

(3) Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a govern-ment or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

Al-Qaeda members would seem to qualify as having POW status under this category. So would Taliban fighters unless the US did in fact recognize the Taliban as a government or authority over it's fighters, in which case they would qualify under the first category:

(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

I am a little puzzled about that myself. People in general seem to think they know just what's in the Geneva Conventions, regardless of the actual text. I blame Hollywood.

And, again, I have dished out plenty of criticism to the president on these policies.

I'm not sure what point you were trying to make with that statement. Is that a claim at neutrality or objectivity? Or just trying to say "It's not my fault, I was critical of those policies", even while being supportive of keeping those policy makers in their position to make more flawed policy?

I hope it was a claim at neutrality, since we all want to believe that our opinions are unbiased, but at the same time we all, even you, have to realize that they are not unbiased, and maybe being critical sometimes isn't always enough.

Can a leader not simultaneously believe that extraordinary measures are necessary to protect his people from a very real enemy and yet oppose slaughter, oppression, and famine?

No.

You respect human rights or you do not. Paying lip service in one case while violating them in another makes you (i.e. Bush) exactly what the AI spokesman claimed: a hypocrite.

Saying "I believe extraordinary measures are necessary to protect my people" is right up there with "I will make the trains run on time."

At the least, they do not have to be considered prisoners of war, and accorded treatment as such, because of that uniform thing.

Does the Geneva conventions specify what qualifies as a uniform? And does it have to be a uniform of a recognized government? Or is a uniform that which the opposing force deems a uniform?

This is the classic case of the press having an agenda for a story and then getting quotes to support that agenda.

Not entirely unlike rounding up a bunch of quotes against an entity you disagree with, no?

The discussions--as reported by the Financial Times--were limited to ways in which the country can export natural gas. For Bush to talk about "liberating oppressed people" and then try and hatch economic deals that will bolster one of Asia's most repressive regimes is hypocritical and indicative that Bush's words are nothing but bloviating blather.

How so? Did the events that they are reporting not happen? Were the quotes that they are reporting not uttered? Was this some obscure event that went unreported and then was brought out of the dark closet and propped up?

No. It was a big event, it was a prominent event and it was an event where getting quotes from the people they did was perfectly appropriate.

I know you *think* it's a "classic case", but really James, that's *your* bias. That's your "classic case" of putting your own interpretation where there is no evidence to support that interpretation. That's why this is a "hack" blog post. You don't really have any evidence for this, you just have your completely unsupported opinion that they had an agenda and warped reality to conform to it.

WRT your so called criticism, it's just my opinion, but you're criticism is really quite soppy and wet. Yes, you'll state X, but then you'll add so many qualifiers and such that the "criticism" seems to be little more than a patina to hide behind when the wind changes direction so that you can say you "criticized" the issue in question.

But that's beside the point. I'm sure in your mind your a vocal critic of torture and such and I'm certainly not going to change your mind on that perception.

But wrt your post title, you're living in the realm of pure unsupported fantasy and conspiracy theories. You're certainly entitled to such beliefs and flights of fancy, but it's just fun to point out that you don't have a lick of evidence to support your claims and you really are out on the full length of the limb here, relying on your own biases for the secret decoding of the McClatchy piece.

Bravo.

Under the Conventions you still cannot summarily execute anyone, even a spy out of uniform. That's a common misconception. You have to conduct a trial using international standards of jurisprudence, including habeas corpus, if you want to be in compliance with the Conventions. Not to comply with the Conventions, however, is the very definition of a war crime.

I've no problem with conducting proper trials of detainees, with the full panoply of law and evidence in open courts. If found guilty of war crimes themselves, or even espionage (the definition is tougher than just that no uniform rule) then by all means punish them to the full extent of international law, including the use of the death penalty where appropriate.

May I suggest that the current administration's refusal to do exactly that has very little to do with a wish to be nice to detainees and far more to do with obsessive secrecy and paucity of evidence in many cases?

Regards, C

Cernig, if we followed the Geneva Conventions in full, we would not only be able to detain at G'itmo indefinately (ie, till the end of the War on Terror), but be able to summarily execute them.

Again, you're completely glossing over the fact that many of the detainees are not known to be combatants beyond the word of people who may have sectarian or tribal conflicts with their prisoners.