Why does the US/Britain coalition take detainees while Iran takes hostages?

[NNN0LHI]

I have noticed Bush and his minions and our media has been saying it this way. Is there a reason for this?

Don

[theoldman]

1. Same reason that one person's freedom fighter is another

person's terrorist.

[hootinholler]

2. I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with looters and finders

:shrug:

-Hoot

[cali]

3. Not to get too technical about this

but once you start demanding stuff in return for prisoners, they are indeed hostages.

[theoldman]

5. Technically speaking you are correct and this is how most wars

are conducted. Prisoners are only returned at the end of the war. However in Israel prisoners on both sides become hostages because the war never ends.

[cali]

9. Ah, the inevitable

dragging of Israel into a thread that has nothing to do with it.

[Swede]

4. The Geneva convention rules out parading uniformed POW's.

Let alone getting coerced statements.

[loudsue]

6. Iran is evidently holding the Brits in EXCHANGE for their DIPLOMATS

The ones we captured when we stormed the Iranian Embassy in Kirkuk in Iraq. Funny how we haven't heard about this on the MSM, huh?

http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/04/iran-hostage-crisis-becomes-clearer.html

:kick::kick::kick:

[meldroc]

7. Funny, I don't recall Iran calling those 15 British servicemember "hostages."

Granted, I don't know enough to fault either Iran or Britian.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. The same reason they use "sectarian violence" instead of "civil war".

Or, "terrorists" rather than "freedom fighters" or "Iraqi Patriots".

PR aka Bullshit

[stillcool]

10. I think its like a stay at the 'Sheraton'

vs. a stay at the Bates Motel?

POLITICS-US/IRAQ:
Fate of Five Detained Iranians Unknown
Khody Akhavi

WASHINGTON, Mar 29 (IPS) - As the Western media turns its attention to the fate of 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters over the weekend, the status of five Iranian officials captured in a U.S. military raid on a liaison office in northern Iraq on Jan. 11 remains a mystery.

Even though high-level Iraqi officials have publicly called for their release, for all practical purposes, the Iranians have disappeared into the U.S.-sanctioned "coalition detention" system that has been criticised as arbitrary and even illegal by many experts on international law.

Hours before President George W. Bush declared that they would "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," U.S. forces raided what has been described as a diplomatic liaison office in the northern city of Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and detained six Iranians, infuriating Kurdish officials in the process.

The troops took office files and computers, ostensibly to find evidence regarding the alleged role of Iranian agents in anti-coalition attacks and sectarian violence in Iraq. One diplomat was released, but the other five men remain in U.S. custody and have not been formally charged with a crime.

"They have disappeared. I don't know if they've gone into the enemy combatant system," said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served in the White House under former President Jimmy Carter. "Nobody on the outside knows."END/2007) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37142