Well, John McCarthy seems to think that in some ways it was worse. Either way it was vile - and unlike the Lebanon captors, the people running Guantanamo Bay have no worries about the authorities finding out what they are doing and moving in to free their prisoners.

"Captured in the course of an armed struggle" means there was a war going on. It doesn't even necessarily mean there were involved in it. There's always a war going on somewhere.

But in any case it's irelevant. The central,issue is the way in which the US and it's allies treats people it has taken captive, and whether or not this complies with the standard agreed on as basic civilised behaviour in such curcumstances. Whether they are compbatants, or confused civilians.

Some things are not to be defended, even when they are done by your own side. People who justify atrocities carried out by people with whom they share some political or religious beliefs are rightly criticised. That applies just as much when it comes the the US or UK government as it does when it's the IRA or Al Qaeda. Explaining why things happen is one thing, justifying them is another.

The bottom line is, Colin Powells statement that "...we have discharged all of our obligations under the Geneva Convention to treat people in our custody, our detainees, in a very humanitarian way" just does not seem to square with the facts.