us army declares, "geneva conventions, schmeneva conventions"

the associated press has brought more public attention to the story AMERICAblog was covering yesterday regarding american soldiers trading photographs of dead and mutilated iraqis and afghanis for internet porn access. those of us following the story thought this would be a great thing and hoped that it would put more pressure on the military leadership to take action against the soldiers taking, posing in and trading these pictures. that was a few hours ago, when the department of defense was saying it wasn't familiar with the story and was going to be looking into it.

but now that they've had ample time to get the facts straight (you saw that part in the last sentence, didn't you, where i said it had been a few hours?), the army has decided that criminal charges not only would not, but could not, be pursued. john in dc continues to righteously ride the hypocritical asses of military lawyers as we speak.

people are citing televised beheadings and footage of insurgents shooting american soldiers as justification for at least the desire on the part of our troops to spread around the images currently in question. i think a wrong is a wrong no matter who commits it, and you can't defend a specific behavior for some and not others. there are standards, even in war, and they exist for a reason; the last time i checked, "vengeance" wasn't a sound legal justification for anything. it's tough to blame the rest of the world for snubbing us when we attempt to defend the indefensible.