Sunday, February 01, 2004
We Make the Papers
More from The St. Augustine Record's Peter Guinta, currently embedding with us, here.
There was actually some discussion over whether the Army would allow Guinta to publish the photo of the EPW.
Everyone's very conscious of the Geneva/Hague Convention prohibition against the photographing of EPWs, except as needed for routine processing.
The idea is that EPWs should be protected from humiliation or public ridicule.
In this case, I'm glad Peter pursuaded the Army to let him keep the photo. It's clear to me there's no Geneva Convention violation here. You can't even see the guy's face, and there's no evidence of any effort to humiliate the guy, nor is there evidence that there was more force used than neccessary to keep everybody safe.
Indeed, the presence of a reporter is really good insurance that there would NOT be any Law of Land Warfare violations regarding the treatment of EPWs.
So how come a small paper like the St. Augustine Record can scrape up the resources to someone out here to embed for an extended stay, but my Miami-based battalion has yet to see anybody from the Herald?
Splash, out
Jason
There was actually some discussion over whether the Army would allow Guinta to publish the photo of the EPW.
Everyone's very conscious of the Geneva/Hague Convention prohibition against the photographing of EPWs, except as needed for routine processing.
The idea is that EPWs should be protected from humiliation or public ridicule.
In this case, I'm glad Peter pursuaded the Army to let him keep the photo. It's clear to me there's no Geneva Convention violation here. You can't even see the guy's face, and there's no evidence of any effort to humiliate the guy, nor is there evidence that there was more force used than neccessary to keep everybody safe.
Indeed, the presence of a reporter is really good insurance that there would NOT be any Law of Land Warfare violations regarding the treatment of EPWs.
So how come a small paper like the St. Augustine Record can scrape up the resources to someone out here to embed for an extended stay, but my Miami-based battalion has yet to see anybody from the Herald?
Splash, out
Jason
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