The letter discussed below was written by Robin Higgins (Lt Col USMC (Ret)), widow of Col Rich Higgins. Detainees are not real POWs By Debbie Schlussel (c) 2002 WorldNetDaily.com. You should be read Robin Higgins’ letter. As they decide the legal status of Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Professional journalist, civil-rights attorneys, and several international organizations parading as champions of human rights, who are legally challenging U.S. treatment of Taliban terrorist captives. Those groups include the European Union, the Netherlands (including Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Jozias van Aartsen), Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Retired Lt. Col. Robin Higgins, wife of the late U.S. Marine Col. William R.
“Rich” Higgins, wrote a must-read letter in Friday’s USA Today.
Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon captured Col. Higgins in 1988. Hezbollah – the third largest component of bin Laden’s al-Qaida
network, according to the Wall Street Journal – proudly displayed his
hanging beaten body. Years of repeated brutal torture resulted in his July
1990 murder.
Where were these intellectual-elite lights of our world when Col. Higgins
was being tortured by al-Qaida’s Hezbollah? Where were Amnesty
International, the Red Cross, Europe, and the U.N. – for whom he was
employed as a peacekeeper in Lebanon? Not a sound. Same for their deafening silence over kidnapped Beirut U.S. Embassy-based CIA Chief William Buckley, transferred by Hezbollah to Iran, and similarly tortured and bludgeoned to death.
The only parties Mrs. Higgins did hear from were U.S. State Department and other government officials who insisted her husband – unarmed as a U.N. Peacekeeper was not a prisoner of war, but merely a detainee, not entitled to any human rights or their help.
Where was former Attorney General Ramsey Clark when Col. Higgins was treated worse than an animal by the sadistic animals of al-Qaida’s Hezbollah? Too, busy sitting that one out because it did not fit his radical anti-American agenda the way Taliban prisoners do. Amnesty International and the Red Cross? With their selective, disgustingly political “commitment” to human rights, Higgins somehow was not worthy of their support.
However, under the Geneva Convention, the Taliban prisoners are not POWs, and Col. Higgins – who was not treated, so – was. POWs are defined as soldiers who wear uniforms, carried their weapons openly, have a recognized hierarchy, and subscribe to the international norms of warfare.
The Taliban fighters have none of this. Can someone please describe the uniform of Taliban soldiers? As for their weapons, they often hid those like cowards; unless you count the teeth, they often bare to bite people. Flying planes full of innocent people into buildings and cutting off the feet of women whose ankles were exposed -that’s hardly an international norm of warfare, as much as they’d like it to be. There was hardly an orderly identifiable Taliban hierarchy. With Mullah Omar running things at bin Laden’s command, per Ayman el-Zawahiri’s instructions to him, it was more like a martial law gang of a few – at the top, propagandizing a lot of lethal thugs who decapitate, amputate, torture and bite – at the bottom. Contrast that with Col. Higgins. This man was a hero and an outstanding American, withstanding years of torture and losing his life to protect the very Lebanese and Palestinians who repaid him in torture. He was one of seven U.S. Marine Corps officers assigned to the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon in 1987. “He wore a uniform, had a recognized hierarchy and subscribed to the international norms of warfare – although as a United Nations peacekeeper, he was unarmed,” Mrs. Higgins wrote. Besides further disgracing this country and Col. Higgins’ memory, there is absolutely no reason to give Taliban prisoners any more rights than they have already been generously granted. The only reason they were kept alive and brought here is to get information out of them about other terrorists and possible attacks. To grant them POW status would defeat that purpose. Under the Geneva Convention, the prisoners would only be required to give us their name, rank and serial number, and no further information.
As detainees, they do not have that right. Still more rights
than Col. Higgins ever got under their terror network’s “authority.”
Taliban prisoners are treated better here than people in their own country
They are receiving three meals a day, medical care, clothing, shelter, showers, Arabic translators, mail and the right and opportunity to pray five times a day to Allah to destroy America.
The very fact they are receiving any of this is an abomination and
perversion of the memory of Higgins, who was given none of these things
during his years of torture at the hands of their kind. And who had none of
the worldly “human dignity” champions that these murderous criminals now enjoy – even while they try to bite and murder our personnel at the temporary prison.
“I know that even as he was dying of torture, abandoned by the Red Cross, and the United Nations, he thought of himself as a POW. I’m also sure he thought his country did, too,” Mrs. Higgins laments. The terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are not POWs. Col. Higgins was. The fact he was treated otherwise is disgusting. That others would champion the rights of his tormentors’ friends is twice as revolting.
Thanks for taking the time and reading this.
MLG