This is shameful.
From Obama on down, no one in this administration will say that the armed capture and degradation of American sailors is a violation of the Geneva Convention. Secretary of Defense Carter refused to say it in response to a direct question.
Q: Mr. Secretary, Evan Axelbank from Fox 13 in Tampa. Thanks for being here. One follow-up to his question, is there anyway of saying -- I mean, are you able to say whether this is propaganda and whether that violates the Geneva Convention against that sort of propaganda?
And I do have one other question, but just a follow-up.
SEC. CARTER: I -- I have said and I'll see if General Austin want to add anything. Again, we don't know everything that was going on in the circumstance. And we have every reason to learn it because we have our guys back and we want to talk to them, but I want to give them the chance to describe what the overall circumstances are. Lloyd, you want to add anything?
GEN. AUSTIN: That's exactly the point that I was going to make, Mr. Secretary. I think it's -- it would not be a good thing to speculate on which on what may have happened or not happened at this point. We'll know a lot more after we finish debriefing our sailors. And we're in the process of doing that now, so again, this is going to take a bit more time, but I think it's the right thing to do to get the full context of -- of the situation.
What full context is there in which Iran's broadcast was legal? In a Fusion interview, Carter mumbled some more about "context".
Asked of images circulated by Iranian state TV, showing the sailors on their knees with their hands over their heads, Carter said it made him uncomfortable.
“I don’t like to see our guys in the custody of someone else, no question about that,” said Carter. “That is Iranian TV [that] took those films of them. The context — we need to wait and see what the full context of that is.”
“By the way that’s not something we would have done,” he said of making the video.
Maybe we should be doing it. Since clearly Iran has no problem doing it to us.
What possible context is Carter waiting for that will somehow excuse Iran's actions?