Word: talibans
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...Iraqi, but their beliefs are those of the strict Wahhabi strain of Islam repressed under Saddam Hussein. Unlike most Iraqi sitting rooms, this one has no pictures adorning its walls or a television or radio nestled in a corner. Such luxuries are forbidden, just as they were under the Taliban in Afghanistan. At the back of the room are a few men from Saudi Arabia, who stand silently as one of the sheiks, the group's leader, addresses me in Arabic and stilted English. The war in Iraq, he says, is one of liberation, not just of a country...
...Palestinian conflict that he told Mohammed to go ahead with the mission right away. Twice more in 2001, bin Laden pushed in vain for the operation to start. In the end, he did assert ultimate authority in ordering the attacks, over the opposition of senior al-Qaeda officials and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who were worried that a direct attack on the U.S. would provoke a war with the U.S. or trouble with Pakistan...
...torture on prisoners of war and were signed by the U.S. in 1955, did not apply in a war against terrorists. Top officials agreed. In February 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "The reality is, the set of facts that exist today with al-Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Convention was fashioned...
That month President Bush declared that U.S. soldiers would abide by the spirit of the Geneva Conventions but that neither Taliban nor al-Qaeda captives held in Guantanamo Bay would actually qualify as prisoners of war. The conclusion that al-Qaeda members were not subject to the treaty made sense to many international lawyers...
However, the Taliban did represent a nation state--one that was party to the conventions. Still, the Administration decided that, as John Yoo--a University of California law professor who while a Justice Department attorney wrote one of the primary memos--explained last week in a Los Angeles Times editorial, "the Taliban militia lost its right to prisoner-of-war status because it did not wear uniforms, did not operate under responsible commanders and systematically violated the laws...