Yeah, it's sarcasm.

March 31, 2007 8:49 AM

Call that humiliation?No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch. Terry Jones in today's Guardian.
posted by Jay Reimenschneider (11 comments total)

Look, Terry, just because the Americans keep behaving like a bunch of assholes and blatantly ignore the Geneva Convention at Gitmo and elsewhere, doesn't mean it's a good idea to do the same with these British soldiers.
posted by sour cream at 8:59 AM on March 31, 2007

no one expects the snarkish indignation!
posted by pyramid termite at 8:59 AM on March 31, 2007 [2 favorites]

Pay attention.
posted by leftcoastbob at 8:59 AM on March 31, 2007

Also, I don't know about the male soldiers, but the female one was obviously detained on at least one count of debauchery (= having a party with unrelated men in Iranian waters while not being accompanied by a male guardian).
Young girls have been executed for less in Iran.
posted by sour cream at 9:02 AM on March 31, 2007

Haven't they actually released the woman yet? I'm pretty sure they agreed to release her early, but I don't know if it's happened yet.

It would be nice if the "Humiliation" convention were not broken, but I think it's pretty obvious that some conventions are more important then others, and some violations are deeper then others.

Still, is it really fair to compare treatment of British prisoners with the treatment in American prisons?
posted by delmoi at 9:10 AM on March 31, 2007

Another classic situation where both sides are wrong.

We Brits shouldn't be in Iraqi waters or Iranian waters. We shouldn't treat detainees badly (not least because there shouldn't be any detainees). Iran shouldn't be pursuing this course, not least because it's utterly stupid and counterproductive.

You can't blame Iran for being antsy, though. Look at the neighbourhood it lives in. Iraq: invaded and US puppet regime installed. Kuwait: loyally pro-Western ever since 1991. Turkey: NATO member. Armenia & Azerbaijan: both part of NATO's "Partnership for Peace"(!). Turkmenistan: pretty quiet. Afghanistan: invaded and US puppet regime installed. Pakistan: nuclear-armed fragile dictatorship.

I'd be tense.
posted by imperium at 9:13 AM on March 31, 2007

I was saying something kind of similar to a co-worker the other day. The really twisted irony here is that one of the 'Axis of Evil' countries is treating it's prisoners demonstrably better that we are treating ours.

Which forces us to ask the question: who are the bad guys again?
posted by quin at 9:15 AM on March 31, 2007

I'm glad terry is watching all the captured sailors treatment. (guess his python press credentials are valid in Iran) The Iranians are not going to torture them because the Brits might actually get mad and blow up the Iranian navy. Plus these are sailors and are treated to a modicrum of respect. There are violations to the Geneva convention already but we wont' quibble...it's about how many violations and to what degree.
posted by clavdivs at 9:19 AM on March 31, 2007

Quite ironic.

I'm still left wondering where and how far away (aside from being 'out of visual sight') the mother ship of the patrol boats was.
posted by buzzman at 9:21 AM on March 31, 2007

That said, it's not like Iran treats all of it's prisoners this well, as far as I know.
posted by delmoi at 9:23 AM on March 31, 2007

Testimonies from “Like the Dead in Their Coffins”

Hossein T., an Iranian university student and activist

"Twice they took me to the courtyard in Evin, where the executions are carried out. They tied my feet. They took off my blindfold. One man was saying: “Tell me why you lied. Tell me what you did.” They hung me from my feet, and they put a bag over my head. For what I think was 30 minutes, they were kicking me and hitting me. They hit my chin, and the skin broke. Blood began to fill the bag that was tied over my head. Blood began to drip on the floor, and this is when they stopped.

The second time they took me in there, they hung me from my hands. They used a baton to beat my torso. They broke my hand, and I fell unconscious. When I regained consciousness, they said, “If you say you lied, we will stop.” I could not speak. It is not because I am brave that I did not confess, it is because I couldn’t talk."

-from hrw.org
posted by clavdivs at 9:29 AM on March 31, 2007