Nearly 20 retired generals and admirals will converge on Concord this weekend to hold private meetings with presidential candidates about U.S. detention and interrogation policies.

The meetings will be held at Franklin Pierce Law Center and co-hosted by Dean John Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and longstanding critic of Bush administration policies on torture.

"These are guys who have seen the face of war; they know how awful it can be," Hutson said. "And they're looking over the horizon, what's going to happen in future wars."

To date, only Democratic candidates have committed to meetings, including Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich. Other candidates, including Republicans John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, have said they're still working on their schedules, Hutson said.

The meetings will be closed to the press and public to allow for a "robust back-and-forth" Hutson said.

"It would be perfectly acceptable for the candidate to say, 'I don't know about the ticking time bomb issue. What do you think of that?' " Hutson said, referring to a scenario that asks whether torture is justified if the subject knows something about a bomb that's about to go off.

Three retired four-star generals will serve as co-chairmen of the event, including Gen. Paul Kern, who completed the Army's internal investigation into Abu Ghraib.

"I hope that we're able to point out to our presidential candidates the importance of one following our current Constitution and application of the Geneva Conventions and not trying to create new policies and new laws in the midst of a conflict, which - in my personal view - has caused a lot of confusion in the field," Kern said.

The other co-chairmen are Gen. Charles Krulak, a former Marine Corps commandant, and Gen. Joseph Hoar, who oversaw Central Command, the region including the Middle East.

From World War II until 2002, the rules on detention and interrogation were clear, Hutson said.

"The interesting thing about all of this is that for generations and throughout the careers of these officers, everybody knew what the rules were," he said. "They were clearly stated in the Army field manual. They were clearly stated in military doctrine and history. Now, suddenly, things have changed."

Hutson said that when members of the Bush administration limited the applicability of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaty on the treatment of prisoners of war, that changed.

"That was the step off the slippery slope," he said. "Once we said the Geneva Conventions don't apply, then everything was up in the air."

The event is co-sponsored by the nonprofit group Human Rights First. Hutson sits on its board and started talking with leaders of that group about having an event like this a year ago, he said. The event is being held at the law school for several reasons, he said.

"It's partly because I'm on the board, we've got a facility, New Hampshire's a beautiful state and there happens to be a primary coming up," he said.

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