Benj, Smolers’ piece has a faint ring, I tied to that UN doc a while back here, (in the archives now) we are NOT signatories to the UN thing. We are on board with the Swiss conventions however, and there are places where in those docs where the ambiguity was stretched real thin.

For me it still comes down to the way the enemy chooses to fight, the defining bit of immorality that allows them to use human shields, that encourages them to hold children up to catch bullets and women to catch hell. They are not signatories to the conventions either, they are not state actors, they are not a real army. Then what are they? And why should anyone care? That illegal combatant issue is a major point of contention for me, that and ALQ conduct toward civilians.