  Things are just eerily (sp? ) calm right now. Not like my dreams, lately. The night before the wedding, I dreamt of severed heads and strawberry milk. I think I dreamt of the severed heads because of the scene in LOtR ROtK where the men of Gondor are trying to hold the gates of Minas Tirith and orcs toss the severed heads of the soldiers that were slain trying to hold Osgiliath.
Well, that and I had just gotten through with reading a blog about the guy whose head was severed in Iraq. The truth is, I'm really enraged by that action. The blog about that young man's death speculated that his death was the direct result of the Iraqi's hearing about the abuse of their detainees. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time believing that a country that did not sign the Geneva convention should be able to expect that their detainees will be treated well. I think it's more likely that they expect that their men and women won't be treated well. So, I'm not sure if the beheading was really about their detainees so much as being about, "We'll strike fear in the hearts of the Americans by showing just how insane we can be when we are messed with.
" Although, the thing that gets me is the ignorance. How can they not know that such an action will only encourage flocks of Americans to come to their country? We humiliated Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini and we gave Ho Chi Minh and Stalin a run for their money. Wherever there will be a dictator (or people that share a dictator's ideals,) there will be 15 Americans to deal with him. Five to die for freedom, five to kick the crap out of whomever gets in the way of freedom and another five to occupy the territory until we can be certain that we will live without fear of tyrrany. The people behind that boy's death had to know this. It's throughout American history. It's not hard to find out that America was founded by war (the American Revolution), America will protect her interests by war (Spanish American war,) America's economy is usually bolstered by war (WWII,) and America will fight to hold onto freedom even if she knows there is a chance she will lose (Vietnam). A war against terrorists is even better because that means that the United States isn't actually bound to the regular rules of war.
Things like the Geneva convention and such were all directed towards a country's recognized military. Not civilians with machine guns and dull knives. This means a civilian caught trying to kill an American troop does not necessarily get to have representation, this means an Iraqi citizen that kills an American citizen while in Iraq does not necessarily get a right to a fair and speedy trial, this means that "detainees" might not actually be "detainees", but prisoners for life and there's nothing that anyone (including American lawyers,) can do about it because the rules were not made for these people. There is no precedent for treating these people well. The existing laws were created to deal with prisoners of war in recognized armies.
Several members of the same religious affiliation carrying weapons do not count as an army in the eyes of _any_ government. If the Iraqis really want to push for better treatment of their detainees, then what they need to do is lobby with their own government to create a bill that will ensure their detainees are treated with dignity and respect. Then, they need to push to have that bill turned to a treaty that the U.S. must sign. Killing some random person on Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani, or Irani soil is not only needless, but to my mind something far worse: LAZY. 
