Don't Be Cruel

"We are walking the line on the prohibition on cruel treatment. But are we really in search of the boundary between the cruel and the acceptable?"

This is asked by Derek P. Jinks, an assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Law and the author of a forthcoming book on Geneva, The Rule of War, in reference to the Pentagon's decision to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Conventions that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment."

Sources said Cheney's chief of staff David Addington and Stephen Cambone, the Defense undersecretary for intelligence, claimed the Geneva Conventions restrict the United States' ability to question detainees.

The conventions and the international humanitarian law exist to limit the barbarity of war for our side as well as there's. How can we expect American soldiers to be treated any better than we treat our prisoners of war?