Welfare Of POWs On Generals' Minds
As the war in Iraq heats up, there are growing concerns in U.S. military ranks about the treatment of American prisoners of war, as well as how allied forces will be able to deal with a flood of Iraqi POW's that's already reported to be in the thousands.
CBSNews.com's Joel Roberts spoke with CBS military analysts retired U.S. Army Gen. Buck Kernan and retired USAF Gen. Joe Ralston about the POW issues and the progress of the war so far.
On the fourth day of military action, Kernan says, "Everything is progressing on time or maybe even faster than expected."
Despite heavy U.S. casualties in fighting around an-Nasiriyah, a crossing point over the Euphrates River northwest of Basra, the generals say there's no reason to think the coalition push to Baghdad has been slowed.
Ralston says that's because "we don't know if the fighting was heavier than anticipated. We don't know how much time was planned" for this leg of the operation in the first place.
Kernan says it's important to note that the speedy 100-mile-a-day pace of the early allied move through southern Iraq should not be considered the norm. He points out the incredible logistical challenge of moving thousands of soldiers and thousands of vehicles through hostile territory.
The treatment of American POW's is also a big concern, especially after Al-Jazeera showed Iraqi television footage of interviews with five American soldiers – four men and a woman – being held prisoner. The soldiers gave their names, ranks, serial numbers, and home towns. Two were bandaged.
On CBS News' Face the Nation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that if those are indeed coalition soldiers being shown, "those pictures are a violation of the Geneva Convention."
(The international convention states that "prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.")
Ralston says that "Iraq does not have a great record" in regard to POW's, pointing to hundreds of Kuwaiti prisoners unaccounted for from the first Gulf war in 1991.
And Kernan adds, "We've had bad experiences with our POW's in all wars. We saw that most recently in Vietnam."
With thousands of Iraqi prisoners having already surrendered in the war's first few days – and tens of thousands more expected – Ralston says tending to enemy POW's poses "another big logistical challenge."
Prisoners need to be fed, housed and cared for. Many of the regular Iraqi army soldiers, though, appear not to have actually surrendered so much as simply not shown up for the fight.
U.S. forces were overwhelmed by 69,000 surrendering Iraqi soldiers in 1991; this time around, military officials say they expect 270,000 Iraqis - or more than half the nation's army - to lay down their arms.
Kernan says that while handling the flood of POW's will be a major chore for military officials, it's something the U.S. "has planned for."
Making that job even tougher are reports that some Iraqis used ruses to trap American soldiers around an-Nasiriyah, waving white flags in surrender or dressing as civilians pretending to welcome U.S. troops, and then attacking them.
Kernan says such behavior is "against the Geneva Convention. You can't use the flag of surrender" and then turn around and attack.
Because of such incidents, he says U.S soldiers will have to be "much more cautious" in how they deal with surrendering forces.
"It's another difficult challenge on the battlefield," he says, but he's confident young U.S. military leaders will respect prisoners' rights, no matter how they may be provoked. The "values and ethos of the American soldier," he says, will insure that prisoners are treated humanely.
"The Iraqis must be grateful for this coalition," Kernan says. "A lot of other coalitions might use these kinds of incidents as a green light to go ahead and kill them."
By Joel Roberts