Kerry: I'll Fight Terror Using the Geneva Convention
Friday, May 14, 2004 10:07 a.m. EDT
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday that he'd do a better job than President Bush fighting the war on terror because he'd uphold the Geneva Convention that prohibits pressuring detainees to talk to interrogators.
"I will fight a more effective war on terror because I would never have thrown out of the door or window the obligations of the Geneva Conventions," Kerry told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."
The Geneva Convention in questions mandates that POWs be protected from "coercion," "insults" and "unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
It also requires that detainees be provided with monthly medical checkups and a store to shop in, as well as requiring that facilities be made available for "the practice of intellectual, educational, and recreational pursuits, [including] sports and games amongst prisoners."
Kerry didn't explain how guaranteeing terrorist suspects a better lifestyle than our own soldiers would keep America safe. But he insisted, "I know, as a former combatant, that, had I been captured, I would have wanted our moral high ground with respect to those Geneva Conventions to be in place."
When Kerry served in Vietnam, however, the North Vietnamese abrogated the Geneva Convention as a matter of course, routinely torturing U.S. POWs.
In fact, as one NewsMax reader - a former Marine - explained, the U.S. military has not had an adversary in the past 60 years that respected or followed the Geneva Convention, including Japan in WWII, North Korea, North Vietnam and Afghanistan. |
