Saddam to be declared, "POW"

This is really good news. Sure he is by all accounts a really bad guy, but the U.S. -- I'm not using the "and our allies" line, because it's simply rhetoric -- after having illegally invaded and now occupied Iraq, should treat Saddam as one of our guys should be treated if the situation was reversed.

Here's the AP's take on this:

Hussein declared to be a POW

The general counsel office in the Pentagon has determined that Saddam Hussein is a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq's military.

BY MATT KELLEY
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Pentagon lawyers have determined that Saddam Hussein has been a prisoner of war since American forces captured him Dec. 13, a Defense Department spokesman said Friday.

Despite that determination, aides to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were grappling Friday with what to say publicly about the issue. A senior defense official who insisted he not be named said Hussein's legal status was still under review.

Similarly, Secretary of State Colin Powell told CBS News: ''I don't know that he has been formally declared a prisoner of war.'' It was up to the Pentagon, Powell said.

However, Powell said, "We are certainly treating everybody in our custody in accordance with basic rights and expectations of international agreements that we have.''

Whether or not Hussein is a prisoner of war could be key to how he is treated in captivity and eventually put on trial. The Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war forbid any kind of coercion in POW interrogations, for example.

Rumsfeld said earlier in the week that Hussein and all Iraqi captives are being treated in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.

He said Hussein's legal status was being reviewed by several U.S. agencies and that no determination had been made.

The general counsel office in the Pentagon -- the Defense Department's top civilian lawyers -- has determined that Hussein is a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq's military, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said Friday. More at link

I thought that democracy, where it concerns rule of law had been abolished in the post 9/11 climate. The detainees at Guantanamo, and Jose Padilla's treatment certainly pointed in this direction.

As all the partisans on both sides of the issue as so fond of saying, "everything changed on Sept. 11." Well, if rule of man trumps rule of law, then this is certainly the case. In a democracy model that has withstood civil war, two world wars, and a host of other crises, that statement is incompatible. As noted above, we have been successfully able to contend with crises orders of magnitude greater than 9/11. Suspension of the rule of law would be the death knell of American democracy.

A democracy is not worth the breath used to utter the word when allowed to be shaped by emotional responses to events, however frightening they may be.

Appeals to emotion can be powerfully motivating and cause us to wander from the path that has served us so well. Black and white versions of the world are both inaccurate, and defeatist to long term goals. As we have seen over the last year in particular, submitting to these appeals can have grave consequences. This has been clearly demonstrated in the build-up to, and subsequent prosecution of the second Gulf War. We have damaged relationships with the very states that we will need to share information with, if the scourge of international terrorism is to be depreciated. Not just for today, but for extended periods. Logic and reason are the tools by which to best illuminate our future. But I digress.

Saddam's treatment as a POW is a small but very valuable victory for democracy in a country that has been governed in a de-facto manner by an odd jingoism, as some corners continue to recklessly beat the drums of war.

Most Americans(and that includes your author) know very little of Saddam Hussein. We are told a great many things about this man. Some are assuredly true. Perhaps most or all. But there is nothing that nearly 100% of the U.S. population knows about Hussein that hasn't been through a governmental filter of one variety or another.

I am a skeptic because of my academic background. In science one takes no novel information at face value. I may be too harsh on governmental sources of information, but like a poor scientist once the government has been shown to be in error, their subsequent information should be first viewed with skepticism. This administration, like most all others, has been shown to be deceitful.

I would not be doing anyone a favor by accepting information provided to me by the government -- or any source for that matter -- if I took it at face value without scrutiny. The true scientific method cannot be used in many instances where information is provided, but the tools of critical thinking can. I would say that they must.

In the coming days, weeks and months, I suspect that information about Saddam Hussein will make its way to the public. All information should be viewed with the same scrutiny that one might use if told that there are an army of sequined turquoise chameleons replete with gold lamé covered toe pads were about to take over your neighborhood.

It will be difficult, but not impossible to assess the available information with a high likelihood of accuracy. Here's a good place to hone your critical thinking skills.

Covertly, the U.S. largely made Saddam, and I am fairly certain that Saddam has more detail to add to the published accounts of who, how, why, and what the U.S. did, or did not do for him, and for Iraq during his ascendancy to power, and in assisting him in solidifying and retaining that power.

In closing, I'll offer you the words of true renaissance man, Sir Francis Bacon. In 1605 he wrote: "For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things ?… and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture."

We should all aspire to view novelty with the same degree of reason.