The MSN Is Doing It Again (Anyone from Media Watch out there?)

Notice this, current news of the latest horrors in Iraq will, without exception, note that two of our soldiers have been kidnapped at a checkpoint in Iraq.

If we are at war in Iraq those soldiers were not kidnapped, they are missing in action. So why doesn't the news say they were captured rather than ki napped? Was it not George W. Bush who said we would not treat terror as if it were a criminal matter but make a war of it instead? The answer is because there is a difference in perception depending on the language used.

Notice this difference. Kidnapping is a criminal act, an act of wrong doing, and act committed by a bad person. If were were to say that that our troops were captured it says something entirely different. First it gives legitimacy to the insurgency and second it shows that our forces are not invincible. The message is not that we were defeated in this skirmish, it is that our poor troops were duped by criminals of the most vile sort.

Its subtle but its there, day after day, channel after channel.

What can I say, other than, well said! :thumbsup:

Noted.

Because it underscores that this is an unwelcome occupation and the people we are fighting are all civilians, not soldiers, that we are being killed, maimed, and "kidnapped" not in battle, but riding thru the cities we have destroyed.

Keep pointing out the language discrepancies to everyone you can.

They can't have it both ways.

The Geneva Conventions


Snip>

Prisoners of War

The 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war defines PoWs as members of the armed forces captured during a conflict, or: Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, … provided that such militias or volunteer corps … fulfil the following conditions:


That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
That of carrying arms openly;
That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

PoW or Unlawful combatant?

The United States created a new controversy over the conventions after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration quickly declared that members of al-Qaeda captured on the battlefield were "unlawful combatants" and not subject to the Geneva Conventions.

Mary Robinson, the UN human rights chief, said they should be considered prisoners of war, as defined by the Geneva Conventions. At the time, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other military officials called them "detainees" or "unlawful combatants." MORE...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/iraq/genevaconventions.html

If Bush and the DoD had REALLY ever supported the troops they wouldn't have put them in the spot they are in now, by torturing and beating to death POWs. THe bad Apples are in Washington.