There was a time when “peacekeepers,” that is official United Nation representatives from other countries, were respected enough by warring factions to be left alone to go about their business and.fulfill their mission.

Additionally, there was a time when the United States honored the articles of the Geneva Conventions, especially the third and fourth Conventions which deals with the treatment of civilians in the hands of enemies during wartime and prisoners of war respectively.

Well, those days and codes of conduct are being challenged and ignored in many parts of the words including most recently in the Sudanese province of Darfur where seven international peacekeepers were killed and 22 wounded in a brazen day ambush by heavily armed men in trucks and on horseback in the Sudanese province of Darfur, according to United Nations officials.

The attack, on Tuesday, was the deadliest on international forces in Darfur since September 2007, when 10 peacekeepers were killed in an assault on a base, and was a severe blow to the combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force that has struggled to protect civilians and itself.

About 200 men in 40 trucks descended on a convoy of peacekeeping soldiers and police officers about 60 miles east of their base in El Fasher, the regional capital, as they returned from patrol. They had been investigating allegations of abuses by a rebel faction allied with the government.

There was a time when the United States took the “high road” in these types of matters allowing us to condemn and admonish others for their violations of the Geneva Conventions however that time has passed as we have joined the perpetrators and are as guilty as anyone else.

Two of America’s most recent and controversial violations have been the incidents at Abu Ghraib Prison and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.Beginning in 2004, accounts of abuse, torture, sodomy and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (also known as Baghdad Correctional Facility) came to public attention

Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors

Media commentators, legal experts and human rights organizations internationally have rightly accused the Bush administration of brazen hypocrisy in threatening to indict Iraqi leaders as war criminals for displaying American prisoners of war on state television.

On March 23, following the news that US soldiers had been captured by Iraqi forces, President Bush declared: “We expect them to be treated humanely, just like we’ll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely…. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld added: “The Geneva Convention indicates that it’s not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued similar comments.

History is an interesting thing when viewed in hindsight….especially when those participants are still alive to face their statements and behavior. It is for that reason that we are glad to report that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice are still in good health!