Are al-Qaeda fighters victims, robbed of their legal rights under the Geneva Convention by the repressive Bush Administration? Are terrorists victims of American oppression? That's what you might think if you believed the New York Times editorial page and the humanitarian bureaucrat-activists coloring the Times' coverage of postwar Iraq.

In an October 16 editorial ("The American Prison Camp"), the New York Times attacked the Bush Administration for maintaining its detainee camp for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Citing criticism of the Bush Administration by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the editorial claimed that Administration justifications for the have no foundation in the Geneva Convention. The NYT then demanded, in the name of justice, that unlawful combatants (in this case, terrorists) be granted civil rights that the U.S. in previous wars had not granted even to lawful combatants. Traditionally, unlawful combatants have been considered not soldiers, but criminals, spies or saboteurs, and as such, were executed or imprisoned for lengthy sentences...