Terrorists who pose as journalists will no longer have protection from the U.S. new Pentagon manual states

The Pentagon has released new instructions on dealing with terrorists, or more specifically, terrorists who pose as journalists or journalists who work with terrorist groups.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The "Department of Defense Law of War Manual" is a comprehensive, 1,176 page document which outlines the manner in which members of the U.S. military may engage and fight with the enemy in air, land or sea.

The document has created a new term for terrorist fighters who do not wear uniforms or abide by internationally accepted rules for warfare, calling these people an "unprivileged belligerent."

Another section of the legal document deals with journalists in combat zones, and the expectation that they will not enter the fight.

"In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerent," the document says, lumping some of these people in with terrorists.

An expert on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, calls the above paragraph "odd."

"It's a realization that not everyone abides by the same standards [as the U.S. does]" he said. "Just as Hamas uses United Nations schools as weapon depots and Iran uses charity workers for surveillance, many terrorist groups use journalists as cover."

Rubin pointed out two incidences where terrorists posed as journalists to attack targets. One was the assassination of Ahmad Shah, an anti-Taliban leader, who was killed by al Qaeda terrorists posing as journalists, as well as Chechen Islamist fighters who often go on missions with camera crews in tow.

"Journalists are the new consultant. Anyone can claim to be one," Rubin continued. "No American serviceman should ever be killed because a politician told them they had to take a foreign journalist at his or her word."

"We do not think that there is any legal significance to the manual listing unprivileged belligerents as sometimes being journalists because the manual does not, itself, create new law," he said.

"That last sentence simply reflects that, in certain cases, persons who act as journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces or unprivileged belligerents rather than civilians. The fact that a person is a journalist does not prevent that person from becoming an unprivileged belligerent."

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