Mainstream media pushing Rovian "War Crimes" meme re Guantanamo trials

[HamdenRice]

Has anyone else noticed the egregious, misleading use of the term "war crimes trials," by the mainstream media in describing the Military Commission Act trials that the Bush administration is now launching in Guantanamo?

Isn't it odd that the Bush administration and the brain dead, lazy, propogandistic mainstream media (including NPR of course) would start calling the military commissions trials, "war crimes trials," just as domestic and international interest in prosecuting former and current Bush administration officials for "war crimes" is reaching an all time high, and various Bush administration officials are being warned against travelling to Europe, where they might be subject to arrest for war crimes, after the end of their catastrophic administration?

Wasn't one of Rove's favorite tactics painting your enemy with your own faults -- such as calling John Kerry a coward to confuse the issue about Bush's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard -- or otherwise just plain confusing the public?

Well, the Bush administration seems to be at it again. They seem to be trying to confuse the public about the nature of "war crimes." Now it may very well be true that many of the detainees at Guantanamo have committed "crimes," including the crime of terrorism, and they may have also considered themselves or been "at war" with the United States.

But that does not constitute "war crimes."

"War crimes" in general are violations of the laws of war, and would include acts like the murder, torture or ill-treatment of prisoners of war -- you know, the kind of thing the Bush administration is accused of. Other war crimes include killing enemy soldiers who have indicated that they want to surrender, ill treatment or deportation of civilian populations and wanton destruction of towns and cities (kind of like what happened in Fallujah), mass murder and genocide (which the one million or so dead Iraqis increasingly seems to be).

Closely related to "war crimes" are "crimes against peace," which basically means planning, starting and waging a "war of aggression," that is, a war that is not a defensive war or war of collective security, but is a war launched in violation of international law when the country launching the war has not been attacked or threatened -- kind of like the Iraq War.

NPR has been particularly committed to "catapaulting the propoganda" as Bush would put it, starting out the morning news cast the last few days with headlines about the beginning of "war crimes trials" at Guantanamo. For example, this morning, NPR's Morning Edition described the military commissions act trials as "war crimes trials," and it's website right now has, under the headline "Trial Of Bin Laden's Driver To Begin In Guantanamo," the sentence, "The first war-crimes trial at Guantanamo Bay starts tomorrow..." and as I write this, NPR legal correspondent, Nina Totenberg, is describing the military commissions as "war crimes trials." Surely, NPR can afford to buy Nina a legal dictionary or a connection to the internet where she can look up "war crimes" on Wikipedia? Is Nina completely ignorant of what constitutes "war crimes" -- or is she just passing along Bush administration press releases and talking points? What happened to her vaunted capacity for "legal analysis"?

Similarly, the Los Angeles Times, had the bizarre headline on July 18th, "First Guantanamo war-crimes trial set to begin." But the accompanying story is about Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni accused of being Osama bin Laden's driver, and only near the end of the article does it describe the actual charge against Hamdan, "conspiracy and material support for terrorism" -- a very serious charges indeed, but not "war crimes." The only detainees who could likely be charged with "war crimes" would be those who were directly involved in planning or carrying out the September 11th attacks which killed a large number of non-combatant civilians.

So why has the Bush administration launched the meme that the Military Commission Acts trials are "war crimes trials" and why is the brain dead mainstream media going along with it?