the treatment of the hostages despicable.

That's speculative. It might turn out to be accurate speculation, but at this point there seems to be no evidence indicating that they are being treated badly.
.........
I was a bit puzzled by folk1e: "The vice admiral seems to have the same opinion as me ...... the marines were on "our side of the border" even allowing for a safety element for the disputed boundary!" (28 Mar 07 - 09:11 PM), when previously he'd quoted him as saying "There are two lines, the border between Iraq and Iran, and an operational border line set up on the Iraq side of the international border to prevent "operational misjudgements". The Marines were taken from the east of both borderlines...." I imagine that folk1e must have typed "east" when he meant "west" - makes quite a difference.