(BUFDRVR) schrieb:

Then perhaps it should be time for the US to pay it's $2BN
debt to the UN.

If we pay our debt, will the UN begin paying the State and City of New York the
billions they pay every year for hosting the United Nations. Everything from
additional police to sanitation removal are not paid for by the UN. We could
probably pay off some of that in parking tickets if UN members ever paid them,
but they flaunt their diplomatic immunity pretty good in downtown Manhatten.

Come on... hardly an argument, since the current total debt on parking
tickets et al. runs at about 22 million Dollar. The top ranking
violators are Kuwait and (IIRC) Morocco, their debt is subtracted from
the US financial aid given to them....

Isn´t it simple - you join the club, you pay the admission fee?

Potential chemical and biological weapons and known ties to international
terrorists was more than enough "proof".

(...)

Iraq was still developing chemical and biological weapons and had known ties to
international terrorists.

It doesn´t get truer by repetition.. reminds me of the slogan
"Marxismus ist richtig, weil er wahr ist.". :-(

I don't think the convention makes such a distinction.

It absolutely does. You can't engage in armed conflict in jeans and a T-shirt
and expect to be recognized as a legal armed combatant. The convention not only
says you must be a uniform, but an "officially recognized" uniform.

Article 4 of the third convention sates that any indiviudual,
militia or voulenteer corps engaged in war is regarded a POW
when captured.

Correct, if wearing a uniform identifying themselves as such.

And if not they should be regarded as POW until proven of different
status..I stumbled across an item by "The Guardian" dealing with that
as a side-topic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...921192,00.html

To quote:

"The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva
conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful
combatants". The same claim could be made, with rather more justice,
by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their
country. But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the
third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of
a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be
regarded as prisoners of war.

Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified,
article 5 insists that they "shall enjoy the protection of the present
convention until such time as their status has been determined by a
competent tribunal". But when, earlier this month, lawyers
representing 16 of them demanded a court hearing, the US court of
appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory,
the men have no constitutional rights."

BUFDRVR

Gruss, Roman