Brad Thor Quotes

You should declare the Taliban and Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act.

President Bush and his commanders announced early in the conflict that the Conventions applied.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

A decision that the Geneva conventions do not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan in which our armed forces are engaged deprives our troops there of any claim to the protection of the conventions in the event they are captured

According to the laws of war, a warring party can just walk away from civilian harm that they have caused.

I don't need a U.N. report to tell me whether my army... operates according to the international law guidelines.

Not enough countries, not enough armies, not enough armed groups are abiding by the fundamental human values enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.

We need to understand that the Geneva Conventions are not just some historical documents born of another time, created for another purpose.

Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

That is because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them.

I knew that the Hague Convention prohibited the use of poison in war. I didn't know the details of the terms of the Convention, but I did know of that prohibition.

This war no longer has anything to do with knightly conduct or with the agreements of the Geneva Convention.

The concept of war crimes is an American invention.

What is the Geneva Convention on wars! I have never read it.

While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.

Perhaps the most basic rule of the law of armed conflict is that civilians and civilian objects must not be made the object of direct attack, although incidental injuries caused to such persons or objects in the course of a legitimate attack must be proportionate to the purpose of the attack.

The young, the old, women, the disabled, the sick and the wounded are entitled to protection under international law. Too often, the ICRC's calls for those laws to be respected are ignored.

By 2003, if you didn't understand that the United States was inflicting torture on those deemed enemy combatants, you weren't paying much attention.

But in Afghanistan, the general rule was that since you were fighting the Taliban, which was not a lawful government force, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And that led to a lot of excesses in Afghanistan, excesses like Abu Ghraib that were already well-publicized.

I think they clearly do not fit within the prescriptions of the Geneva Convention. It's hard for me to see how members of al Qaeda could be considered prisoners of war.

There seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.

The United States of course wants to follow the highest standards of conduct with regard to enemy combatants who follow the rules of war. It should and does follow the Geneva Conventions scrupulously when fighting the armed forces of other nations that have signed the Geneva Conventions or follow their principles.

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.

The world must know that America holds to the highest standards of military conduct and human rights protections. Anything less is unacceptable.