Seems the US scandal du jour is the waterboarding/torturing of prisoners at Guantanamo, and then having the gall to delete the videos before somebody leaked them to YouTube.

Believe I talked about what was taking place at Guantanamo almost 6 years ago.  It's taken this long for them to admit what we already knew was happening. The only reason they're whining about the videos now is because it's coming up on an election year and they'd really like to use the footage on the campaign trail.

But I got to thinking... The only reason why we can hold all these guys in violation of Geneva Convention is because we claim that technically they aren't part of an army. They're 'illegal combatants' in Cheney-speak. If Al-queda wanted to prevent us from doing things like this going forward, all they would have to do is declare themselves to be a political party operating under a government in exile from somewhere. Then they would legally be soldiers and we couldn't torture the poor buggers. In fact I'd have to say that Iraqi-born insurgents are probably legal combatants and completely entitled to POW status today. Defending one's homeland from foreign invaders is the noblest of military pursuits.

Any Syrian or Iranian combatants are on their own.