As dear Osama has spelled it out, the women and the children, the armed and unarmed, adult or embryo -- all are agents of the "great Satan" and therefore legitimate targets.

We can summarize these "rules" succinctly. Al-Qaeda can kill whom it likes, when it likes, for whatever reasons it likes, by any means and in any number it likes, while operating in stealth and secrecy among its target populations.

Given that this is a fair accounting of the group's modus operandi,on what grounds will anyone argue that these people are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or any other convention? They have no entitlements. They forfeited, by their actions, such entitlements. If they are being treated by those protocols, it is by the moral largesse of the U.S. military.