This administration is much heavier on historians (of the C- variety) than those with military experience (Powell and Rumsfeld are now gone). It is hard to believe that they are unaware (particularly Gonzales) of the events of 70 years ago (when Japan tried to conquer China) and their applicability to our behavior in Iraq and Afganistan. I found the following quote eerie.
"Countries avoid a declaration of war so they may claim
"the laws and customs of war did not apply and need not
be observed." Japan never declared war on China.
Instead, the fighting was euphemized as an "incident."
Chinese troops were not "soldiers," but "bandits."
One
of the customs of war Japan was able to flout in this
"incident" against "bandits" was acknowledgement that
captured Chinese soldiers were prisoners of war. A 1933
army infantry test book assured IJA officers that when
they took prisoners, "if you kill them there will be no
repercussions." In a 1937 directive, the army vice
chief stated: "In the present situation, in order to
wage total war in China, the empire will neither apply,
nor act in accordance with, all the concrete articles
of the Treaty Concerning the Laws and Customs of Land
Warfare and Other Treaties Concerning the Laws and
Regulations of Belligerency." The same directive
ordered "staff officers in China to stop using the term
'prisoner of war.'" As Pulitzer Prize - winning
historian Herb Bix pointed out, Hirohito himself
"supported the policy of withholding a declaration of
war against China and ratified and personally endorsed
the decision to remove the constraints of international
law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war." Thus
Chinese soldiers taken in battle were "denied the
status of prisoners of war upon the same pretext and
many of them were massacred, tortured, or drafted into
Japanese labor camps.""
Flyboys by James Bradley pp.54-5