`  == Until a ``competent tribunal`` determines his status isn't he entitled to POW treatment ? ==  Article 5 of the third geneva convention says prisoners are entitled to a competent tribunal to determine their status.  The Bush administration tried to say that it lay within the President's powers to rule that anyone captured in ``the war on terror`` was not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.  But the USA has three branches of government, with checks and balances, and that ruling was over-ruled.  The Bush administration resisted providing the detainees with a ``competent tribunal``.  When they could no longer do so they implemented the Combatant Status Review Tribunals.  However, the mandates of the CSRT fell short of what the Geneva Conventions requires for a ``competent tribunal``.  So, so far as I can determine, Hicks, and all the other detainees, currently remain entitled to the full protections of POW status.  The July 17 ruling by the three judge panel said that Hamdan's ``military commission`` could serve double duty, and also serve as his ``competent tribunal``.  But he and Hicks haven't had their military commissions yet.  So they are still entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.  If Hicks had carried a gun, and shot at Northern Alliance forces, but while doing so, qualified as a lawful combatant, who would argue those activities were crimes?  That is what much of the GCs are about.  Activities that, if conducted by random citizens, would be crimes, are not crimes if a soldier does them.  I knew a guy who was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.  He fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  Franco, with the support of Hitler, and Mussolini, was trying to take over the democratically elected government of Spain.  Thousands of volunteers, from around the world, made their way to Spain to fight fascism.  George Orwell was one of them.  Although he didn't enlist in the International Brigades.  He enlisted in a militia.  Was fighting fascism a good thing?  Well, it was a good thing a few years later, during World War 2.  I think it was a good thing in 1938 too.  The good guys lost that one.  Franco won.  And Spain was a fascist dictatorship for the next 30 years.  I don't believe in extreme fundamentalist Islam.  Or any kind of Islam.  But, it seems to me that the foreigners who went to Afghanistan, Bosnia or Chechnya, to help free fellow muslims, from foreign oppression, were doing something similar to what the volunteers who went to Spain were doing.    Do foreigners enlist in the US Army?  Yes.  And President Bush moved to reward them, by offering them a fast track to citizenship.  But foreigners have always served in the US forces.  Several tens of thousands of individual Canadians crossed the border to enlist and fight in Vietnam.  If the Viet Cong captured one of them, should they have been treated as an ``illegal combatant`` because they were not American soldiers?  What about the French Foreign Legion?  I think the precedent is clear.  Hicks not being an Afghan did not preclude him from enlisting in the Afghan Army.  Was the Taliban Army a real, national Army?  The Bush administration says it wasn't.  But is President Bush's mere say-so enough?    === What about those uniforms ? ===  The uniforms in the US forces, and those of all modern industrialized states are quite, well, ``uniform``.  The US soldier doesn't just have a regulation helmet, and regulation bullet proof vest and combat blouse, but he has regulation pants, boots, belt, backpack.  And probably regulation socks, undershirts and underpants too.  But that is not what the Geneva Convention requires.  The Geneva Convention merely requires that they wear something that clearly identifies them as combatants, not civilians.  Over on a blog site, about two years ago, I asked the other readers how much of a uniform ordinary Americans would have to don if the USA were invaded by, let's say, Cuba, and all the official uniforms were tied up in Iraq.  Some people thought a special armband would be sufficient.  One guy said T-shirts with the American flag on them would not be sufficient, because civilians wear those too.  During the afghan war, when we caught glimpses of Northern Alliance forces, they certainly weren't wearing modern, head to toe, style uniforms.  If the identification they were wearing was merely a special vest, or scarf, or hat, then that is all that should be required of Hicks or Hamdan.`