The big story today is the cap­ture of U.S. sol­diers by Iraqi troops around an Nasiriya. Al Jazeera and Iraqi TV showed footage of the sol­diers — as well as bod­ies said to be sol­diers. Two of the troops iD’ed their unit at the 507^th Main­te­nance. A woman was among those cap­tured.
In a sep­a­rate inci­dent, U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald H. Rums­feld acknowl­edged that some sol­diers were miss­ing, but said the num­ber was “fewer than 10.” (Strat­for reports that the num­ber is actu­ally 12, and that the sol­diers took a wrong turn and are now lost.)
Regard­ing the Amer­i­can cap­tives, on Meet the Press today, Rums­feld said the Iraqis had an oblig­a­tion, under the Geneva Con­ven­tions, to respect the rights of any POWs. ““It’s ille­gal to do things to POWs that are humil­i­at­ing to those pris­on­ers,” he said.
Under Arti­cle 3 of the Con­ven­tions, each war­ring party “shall be bound to apply, as a min­i­mum, the fol­low­ing provisions:

Per­sons tak­ing no active part in the hos­til­i­ties, includ­ing mem­bers of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de com­bat by sick­ness, wounds, deten­tion, or any other cause, shall in all cir­cum­stances be treated humanely, with­out any adverse dis­tinc­tion founded on race, colour, reli­gion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other sim­i­lar cri­te­ria.
To this end, the fol­low­ing acts are and shall remain pro­hib­ited at any time and in any place what­so­ever with respect to the above-mentioned per­sons:

1. Vio­lence to life and per­son, in par­tic­u­lar mur­der of all kinds, muti­la­tion, cruel treat­ment and torture;

2. Tak­ing of hostages;
3. Out­rages upon per­sonal dig­nity, in par­tic­u­lar humil­i­at­ing and degrad­ing treatment;
4. The pass­ing of sen­tences and the car­ry­ing out of exe­cu­tions with­out pre­vi­ous judg­ment pro­nounced by a reg­u­larly con­sti­tuted court, afford­ing all the judi­cial guar­an­tees which are rec­og­nized as indis­pens­able by civ­i­lized peoples.

“The United States of course avoids show­ing pris­on­ers of war,” Rums­feld said. “We have thou­sands of Iraqi pris­on­ers that are in POW camps … but we avoid show­ing pho­tographs of them.“
Hm. While I agree that Iraq should fol­low the let­ter and spirit of the Con­ven­tions, the U.S. has been less than thor­ough in keep­ing true to these pro­to­cols itself, weak­en­ing its case. The pris­on­ers at Camp X-Ray in Guan­tanamo Bay have been held in a legal limbo for months now. Some have been shipped to other coun­tries that employ hor­rific inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods. Human Rights Watch has urged the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion to deter­mine the detainees’ sta­tus and then launch crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion “where cred­i­ble evi­dence exists.” Indef­i­nite deten­tion is not legal under the Con­ven­tions, despite Pres­i­dent Bush’s claim to be uphold­ing the “prin­ci­ples” of the Third Con­ven­tion. As the report from HRW said:

This short­sighted trans­gres­sion sets a dan­ger­ous prece­dent that could come back to haunt U.S. and allied service-members who are cap­tured by enemy forces in this or future wars. Washington’s refusal to treat the detainees as POWs is per­plex­ing because it would in no way inhibit legit­i­mate U.S. efforts to inter­ro­gate or pros­e­cute peo­ple who have par­tic­i­pated in ter­ror­ist acts.

In other news, Iraqi resis­tance is stiff­en­ing, as the bat­tle for Basra rages on. Col. Khaled al-Hashemi, Iraqi com­man­der of the 51^st Mech­a­nized Divi­sion near that city, said March 23 that his divi­sion, reported ear­lier to have sur­ren­dered, would con­tinue to fight against U.S. and British forces. “I am with my men in Basra; we con­tinue to defend the peo­ple and riches” of the town, Al-Hashemi said. [Strat­for]
Also: “Com­bat in An Nasiriyah in south­east­ern Iraq has extended to the cities of Samava, Bataha and Sot al-Sheikh and Hour in the south­ern province of An Najaf. Accord­ing to reports released by mil­i­tary sources inside Iraq lis­ten­ing to allied radio, U.S. and British forces have called for rein­force­ments, more arma­ment, artillery and heli­copter gun-ships.“
U.S. Spe­cial Forces are fly­ing into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan to be deployed around the town of Hal­abja, accord­ing to senior PUK offi­cials. (Likely a backup for actions against Ansar al-Islam. KDP pesh­mer­gas have allegedly fought off a small Iraqi attack near Tepe Garus, about 15 kilo­me­ters from Arbil. [ibid.]
Also, I heard from Djoy, the Kur­dish man in Arbil, who wrote to me last week:

Hello Christo­pher,
Thanks for writ­ing and thanks for your safety wishes. I got back to Erbil city this morn­ing because it was no longer bear­able or log­i­cal to stay in that vil­lage espe­cially after we noticed the very slow pace of the war! any­how we are still tak­ing pre­cau­tions.
I hope you will make it to Iraq soon but please take care of your­self as its a real dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion here and com­pletely unpre­dictable! maybe I will see you in Iraq and hope I can be of help.
You too keep safe,
djoy

More sup­plies to buy today (Gotta restock the first aid kit.) Then tomor­row and Tues­day I’ll be tying up loose ends. Still look­ing at a Wednes­day depar­ture. I’m only wait­ing on Pay­Pal funds to clear and the lap­top to arrive.