First of all, this is my 100th post! I'm pretty amazed that I've actually continued blogging this long... It may be some sort of testament to the addictiveness of it. ;)

I wanted to add my 2 cents to the question of what sort of footage of POWs would be a violation of the Geneva convention. It prohibits turning them into a so-called "public curiosity," i.e. a freak show...

Firstly, I don't think that is what the footage of Iraqi soldiers shown by U.S. stations is doing. The real point of this coverage is to show both the fact that some are surrendering, and the processes our forces are going though during the surrender. There is no freak show -- only generic footage of men walking with hands over their heads, or turning around, kneeling, and being handcuffed...

Secondly, some of the footage aired by Al Jazeera did turn the U.S. POWs into a public curiosity. It showed the dead bodies of soldiers in disarray, in close-up shots. This was too much. But the footage of the live soldiers is more on the borderline. I couldn't say definitively whether this bit was a violation or not, but probably not in my opinion...

Hopefully, both sides will reconsider this issue now, although I don't expect any better journalistic ethics to surface among the Iraqi state media...