Bite your tongue. Colin Powell has never been supportive of this President and it's about time someone reminds him that he's not in office anymore and needs to shut up.
With respect, I don't agree he's correct. The Geneva Conventions (emphasis plural since there are multple such) were written some 60 years ago in the aftermath of WWII, long before common sense ceased to exist; long before modern political correctness and misplaced angst about "the moral high ground" infected thinking about such matters.
These days, with lawyers hanging over everything, and with the western world fairly strangling itself on nonsensical political correctness, the more clarity in law, the better. The currently serving JAG's and general officers quoted at the top of this thread disagree with Powell, and for good reason.
We should be so lucky that other nations would adopt our standards for the treatment of prisoners.
Standards mean squat to most of them.
***Like him or not, Colin Powell is correct is stating that a unilateral definition of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention could pave the way for other nations to make their own unilateral definition that could bring great danger to our troops if ever they should fall into enemy hands.***
As some Freeper said on another thread, name three of our enemies who HAVE treated our prisoners well.
Tell that to the north viet nam army whose country DID sign the articles....how about Korea? Then there's Iran..tell me those countries will treat anyone let alone an American with dignity..
These seem to be the Democrat and media talking points. Do the enemies we are fighting right now abide by the Geneva Convention? Any legislation WE pass won't have any effect on folks who think beheading is a viable method of punishing an enemy. Forget torture; they just kill them! Doesn't sound like Geneva Convention rules to me.
The President is right in that some guidelines HAVE to be in place so some hot shot liberal lawyer won't come back with a jihadist client in a couple of years screaming torture and wanting to hold one of our military or CIA personnel PERSONALLY criminally liable. We can't be held back by worrying what our enemies might think of our rules, as long as we know WE are abiding by the Conventions, which by the way are for UNIFORMED personnel, NOT unlawful combantants.