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Saddam as a POW? What are they thinking?

In case you missed it, the US has declared Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war (POW). That entitles him to specific protections under the Geneva Convention, to which the US adheres. The question I have now is: why? It’s not like we weren’t treating him in accordance with the Convention anyway, but declaring him a POW limits the types of legal action that can be taken against him. As I read it, (and regardless of what the Pentagon is saying) the POW status makes it far more difficult to hand him over to the Iraqis for trial in their justice system. The Iraqi people are correct that this is a major concern.

I cannot see what advantage it give us to grant this status to Saddam. Unless they’ve done it as a condition of his starting to provide useful operational information, it seems a giveaway to me. And giveaways make me nervous. They also give rise to more conspiracy theories and there’s already plenty of those.