POW status is an honor. Pirates and criminals, out of uniform, deliberately violating international law, do NOT deserve POW status.
Therefore, the Geneva Conventions barely apply here, if at all!
McCain: The “Hanoi Candidate”, now fully activated.
They have no uniform. They are not part of any nation’s armed forces, let alone another signatory to the Geneva Convention. They are not POW’s. They are not protected by the Geneva Convention. End of story.
The specific articles of the Geneva convention recognizing rights for "non-uniformed" combatants -- i.e. terrorists -- are contained in the 1977 Protocol II of the Geneva Convention. That Protocol was not signed by Reagan, but by Jimmy Carter. However, it has never been ratified by the Senate and is therefore not part of US Law.
Reagan was under very heavy international pressure to re-sign and bring the ratification vote. He refused to do so.
It is interesting that McCain thinks these techniques damaged our international standing and violated the Protocol II of the convention; there are accounts that several signators (one of them is Great Britain) use far more strenuous techniques on foreign prisoners than we do. The Muslim countries who accept Renditions are, I believe, all signers of the Protocol. So McCain is blaming the US for being better followers of a treaty that we did not even sign than many of our allies and cooperators are.
For anyone who thinks McCain has changed, this is more proof. We need to get this menace voted out of the Senate once and for all.
He's also hollering "Geneva Convention" at us again ~
Can McCain please tell us WHAT COUNTRY AlQaida came from and did they also sign the Geneva Conventions?
And when did they become our ally?
“Therefore, the Geneva Conventions barely apply here, if at all!”
They don’t apply - at all. Has anyone in our government read the dang thing?