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>>The point I'm making above is who's to say what is insulting, degrading, and displaying for public curiousity?!?! So it is the SHOWING that seems to be problematic for the U.S. I know full well that they have to be searched, and later confined, but SHOWING that on TV **IS** insulting and degrading and showing it on U.S. (and other) TV **IS** to satiate public curiousity. There's no two ways about it!
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>There is a huge difference between independent reporters coming upon these Iraqi soldiers, either in the process of surrendering or being held, and Iraqi STATE TV broadcasting these interviews. I just saw brief clips of the American POWs, and they look terrified. I have seen the Iraqi POWs in clips, they look bored.

How do we know that the Iraqi TV folks didn't just come across these and over-zealously "report" it??? People DO get anxious some times, especially reporters and especially when bombs are dropping around them.

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>>The minor fact that U.S. (and most other) stations showing the Iraqi POWs versus the U.S. POWs being shown on STATE TV has NOTHING to do with permissibility under the Geneva Conventions or anything else, especially when the American stations honoured the governmental 'request'. Do you not think that CNN or Fox or NBC or CBS or ABC weren't dying to be there to get the images of the U.S. POWs??? You bet your sweet A** they were!
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>I have already seen the images of the American POWs on CNN. AFTER their families had been notified. Furthermore, independent TV stations are not bound by the Geneva Conventions, at least so far as I know. The government holding the POWs is.

I'm very confident that you are WRONG. If the U.S. has signed on to the Geneva Conventions - and we all know they have - then ALL of its citizens are bound by them. So maybe it is high time for the U.S. government to publish its rules and guidelines to the U.S.-owned media so that they can ensure remaining in compliance. Sure, that might look like a form of censorship, but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes.

I was very glad to see TracyH's post on POW treatment. While I had confidnece that coalition governments' troops complied fully, it is always better to hear it from someone who's BEEN THERE! Governments have been known to lie in the past, especially in the fog of war.


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