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Entry: Who Guards the Guardians? Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/who_guards_the_guardians#29782 Post contents: Ploni, this is a complicated question. Whether the treaties apply at all to conflicts with non-state actors like al Qaeda is highly debatable. They apply to international conflicts of signatories and internal conflicts of signatories. But what of conflicts with non-state actors who are non-signatories outside of one's territory, the modern-day equivalent of pirates? Even if the treaties did, at most the unlawful combatant detainees have the right to "humane treatment" but do not have the right to full POW status and the associated rights of that status. (See Convention III, Art. III of the Geneva Conventions.) Two errors flow through most critics of Bush on this score. First, they presume he made up this "unlawful combatant" category, when in fact it has long existed, predates Geneva, is not displaced by Geneva, and is the basis for US resistance to the 1977 Protocol that would extend protection to non-uniformed national liberation movements. Second, as in liberal approaches to law, Geneva is viewed as evoking a zeitgeist rather than a law with provisions that need to be interpreted and which show who is and is not entitled to protections and, if so, how much. Sent at: 2008 12 02