The New York Times slanders the US military, again, in an outrageous editorial, with which it likewise slanders an “administration that tossed aside the Geneva rules years ago.”

I’m in the military that the Times Editors so thoroughly despise and disparage at every opportunity, and I can tell them this: No military on the face of this earth more thoroughly complies with both the letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions, than the US Military.

The Times suggests that the Bush Administration can’t be trusted with abiding by the Geneva Conventions:

The administration has professed its allegiance to the humane treatment of prisoners and to the rule of law before. But repairing the constitutional balance of powers and America’s profoundly damaged global image demand more than lip service.

Al Qaeda propaganda at its finest. More than lip service, indeed it is. The Times endorses the outright falsehood that the US Military, as a reflection of official US Policy, rejects the rules and obligations of the Geneva Conventions.

As proof, they have spent the better part of the last 5 years pointing to one incident or another of supposed violation. All conducted by individuals, reported by superiors (NCOs and officers), investigated by the military, and punished as appropriate. All under a microscope of dedicated propaganda and partisan point-taking by bitter political opponents of the President, and their media enablers such as the Times.

The latest statement by Department of Defense (DoD) officials states that “prisoner policies already generally complied with the Geneva Conventions” because they always have. Soldiers take the Geneva Conventions and similar standards in the Laws of War quite seriously, and orders or directives to violate those standards would create a loud groundswell of rebuke and public insubordination within the military.

There have been some discussions, debate, and reasonable steps taken to expand tools and techniques of interrogation as they apply to a class of enemy combatants that are neither prisoners of war, nor definable by current Convention articles, much less recognizable as signatories or adherents of international treaty.

Outside of some judge advocate corps (JAG) purists who argue on fine points of military legalese, no serious observer questions the difficulties and contradictions in affording criminal or military justice protections to possible terrorists detained in a battle space, not abiding by rules or conventions. The thought of affording these detainees with what may be highly classified evidence against them, information they can use to thwart interdiction efforts against their fellow Hirabah.

Global terrorism is a grave and evil threat to our way of life, to civilization itself all over the world, as recently evidence by the horrible bombings in Mumbai (Bombay).

If anything, the US Military is a peerless exemplar of how to fight such a threat with honor, humanity, civility, and professionalism against a determined enemy that evidences none of those things. The very few exceptions prove the rule.

Not that the Times is paying attention. They’re too busy carrying water for the Hirabah public relations and propaganda effort.