In article ,
says...

(Brian Allardice) wrote in message
.ca...

Yep. Of course, I seem to recall that the Chinese in Korea tried to do
something similiar with their forced confessions from pilots that they
had been dropping biological weapons on the rice fields and then try
them for war crimes...

To go off topic when we are already off topic might seem silly, but if you have
been following the US/Vietnam "Catfish War" one of the reasons advanced by US
producers for banning Vietnamese catfish is that they are probably unfit for
human consumption due to contamination by residues from Agent Orange.
Hmmm.....


I might be reading it wrong here, but 4.A.1 (applying to the forces and
associated militias &c) contains none of the conditions of 4.A.2 (applying
to
"other" militias &c). I was a bit surprised when I noticed that... I wonder
where Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys would fit in....

Yes, you do seem to be right here. Just to make things more
complicated, the US never recognized the Taliban government as the
government of Afghanistan, and the wording 4.A.1 is "Party to the
conflict"- I'm not sure whether they mean High Contracting Party in
the conflict or simply a group involved with the conflict. The use of
the capital P suggests it might be HCP, which could complicate matters
even more.

I'm glad someone finally said that... sometimes, judging by the discourse
here, I think I must be hallucinating. But to return the the point, I don't
think mutual recognition of the Parties is a problem..

"4.A.3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government
or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power."

The 1977 protocols were supposed to fix it all up and make it more
modern, but the US passed on ratifying it because they felt it was too
protective of resistance groups that they would have to deal with in
the future.

The problem that I see with it is Article 44 section 3-

-snip details-

In other words, you can shoot all you want when you have the advantage
of surprise, and then melt back into the civillian population without
loss of PoW status when captured. You need not have any sort of c-o-c,
distinguishing mark, or anything like that, as long as you carry arms
openly WHILE FIGHTING you are protected; put down the gun and hide
back in the general population all you wish.

Well, at least that has the merit of grappling with the realities of
"asymmetrical warfare", from American colonists sniping at the Redcoats to
almost everything going on today and for the forseeable future.

Cheers,
dba