New Thousand Page Pentagon War Manual Potentially Lumps Journalists in with “Unprivileged Belligerents”
Michael Krieger
LibertyBlitzkrieg.com
Monday Jun 29, 2015
A 1,176 page Pentagon war manual was recently released that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The book of combat instructions, titled “Department of Defense Law of War Manual,” apparently covers rules of war for all branches of the U.S. military.
One passage in particular is generating controversy, where journalists seem to be thrown into a convoluted and opaque category, in which they could be seen as “unprivileged belligerents” as opposed to civilians. Naturally, this has sparked concern that journalists the U.S. government doesn’t like could be lumped into the “unprivileged belligerents” category and subsequently murdered at will. The Washington Times covered this story, here are a few excerpts:
The manual pushes aside the George W. Bush-era label of “unlawful enemy combatant” for al Qaeda and the like. The new term of choice: “unprivileged belligerent.”
An eye-catching section deals with a definition of journalists and how they are expected to stay out of the fight.
The manual defines them this way: “In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents.”
Lumping terrorist writers with bona fide scribes prompted one officer to call the paragraph “odd.” A civilian lawyer who opines on war crime cases called the wording “an odd and provocative thing for them to write.”
The Rest…HERE
