TP,
I never said that they were treated in the same way as the Iraqi POWs. In fact, I can get both Al-Jazeera and Iraqi TV on my satellite, although I can't understand a word of what they're saying, and I have seen the full coverage of the US dead and POWs. To say it was horrific and barbaric is an understatement. It was also in dircet contravention of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs, injured and dead combatants.
My objection was the apparent hobby horse that the media got on about the Geneva Convention, especially with Sky who went with the flow and rebroadcast the Al-Jazeera coverage until they finally thought better of it. They then proceeded to talk about the GC and how they film Iraqi POWs from further away and that makes it all right for them in terms of the GC.
I do not doubt for one minute that the Iraqis are in breach of the GC with what they did and then showed on their TV. My point is that so are the western media, although to a lesser degree. The Iraqi POWs are recognisable to those who know them which, considering the risk to their families when accusations of Kamikazi missions being ordered under threat of torture to the families of the pilots are also being bandied about on the media, is either "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" or not being "treated humanely".
We started this war with the moral high ground. Lets stay there. Maybe the media are too close to all this and we (the military) no longer have much say in what is being broadcast.