It is interesting for Andrew Sullivan to worry about humiliation. Isn't he the guy who makes up awards based on columnists he doesn't like and then mocks them mercilessly? Didn't he create the Raines watch and slice and dice poor old Howell? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If humiliating or degrading behavior, by itself, constitutes torture, then a good part of the female race is guilty and should be brought up on charges for war crimes!

Its important to get the language precise. The Geneva Convention prohibits the following:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

First, the Geneva Convention makes it clear that there is a clear distinction between torture and humiliating and degrading treatment.

Second, it needs to be noted that "humiliating and degrading treatment" is only banned to the extent that it reaches the level of "outrages against personal dignity."

My best understanding of the type of behavior that this would prohibit would be the alleged smearing of fake menstrual blood on Muslim prisoners. Is this torture? No. But it most certaintly is not the behavior of a civilized nation at war. Moreover, it is certainly behavior that we would want to preclude our military from engaging in.

There are most certaintly circumsances under which the question of the limits of appropriate interrogation techniques is a hard one. But it does not make any sense to extract out from those limited circumstances to create a general policy of abandoning standards against humane treatment of prisoners. It is a particularly perverted logic that leads from the hypothesis of the ticking time bomb to Abu Ghraib. Moreover, it is a counterproductive position as well.

The struggle against Islamism is a struggle of ideas. We do not win by becoming more like the enemy - by adopting its ends justifies the means mentality and absolute certainty in our own righteousness. We win by making the enemy become more like us.

On the one hand you have genuinely "becoming more like the enemy," on the other you have "being so afraid of becoming like the enemy that you incapacitate yourself." Between those two poles is the slippery slope. Meanwhile your enemies (and some of your friends and relatives) are happy to accuse you of being "just like the enemy" to hamstring you, even when you are not. There is a big difference between constructive criticism and greatly exaggerated accusations with the intent to guilt-trip the victim into emotional paralysis, which is a blatant propaganda technique the Islamist and their Western lefty friends use all the time.

Our treatment of prisoners is humane the vast majority of the time. Abu Ghraib was an abberation, and most of the prisoners at Guantanamo are treated far better than they were at home (even the Red Cross found so). I think our military is very aware of the negative and positive PR resulting from different kinds of treatment.

We would have to go some distance to become "like the enemy." These techniques aren't anywhere near what the enemy does as a matter of course. I think "wf" makes a good point that constant handwringing (as distinct from actually having a humane policy) isn't good PR either. Muslims don't necessarily like us more because we do so much of it.

There is considerable anecdotal evidence that the Iraqis don't care about Abu Ghraib. They have memories of how Saddam treated prisoners there, and they have IEDs to worry about now, and they are cynical about their "Arab brothers" making a big deal about AG, who didn't lift a finger to help the Iraqis when Saddam ruled.

I think we both would agree that the guilt-tripping technique exists, and that the potential for abuse in interrogation exists; perhaps we differ in emphasis. I know we didn't obsess this much in WWII, and we did some nasty things, but we were the good guys anyway.

More on the propaganda aspect: Islam uses "being offended" as an excuse for mass murder and rioting and burning things down (ex: Sharon on the Temple Mount, the Mohammed cartoons, honor killings, the Koran in the toilet lie, and the whole rationale for Al Qaeda).

At some point this is crying wolf, and I can't take it seriously anymore. I don't accept torture or bad prison conditions, but Muslims seem to want to convince us that they are constantly humiliated by our culture anyway, so what's one more panty on the head, if it's for the purpose of extracting useful information? Which Abu Ghraib wasn't - the humiliation was pervasive and gratuitous, it was the opposite of a careful focused interrogation strategy for particular individuals because it has been determined what would be likely to work.

I know this makes me horrendously politically incorrect, but irreverence is a crucial component of American civilization. If Islamists are going to be shocked by every little thing, they are going to get panties on their heads. I think that's fair, and I don't think it will lose us any friends. (Real friends, not the pissy academic left or pissy UN apparatchiks.)

This is relevant.

Is this torture? No. But it most certaintly is not the behavior of a civilized nation at war.

You're right, we should be fighting a civilized war. A civilized nation at war may shoot enemy combatants on sight. If those enemy combatants are not wearing a uniform, a civlized nation at war isn't even required to accept their surrender. We can cap them all and and leave them to rot, all according to the most civilized guidelines.

There is no guarantee that a live terrorist will give us good information about potential bombs/bombmaking, but we know that a dead one won't be making any bombs. Besides, their computers and the info in their residences are usually better sources of information. Those are worth preserving.

The struggle against Islamism is a struggle of ideas. We do not win by becoming more like the enemy - by adopting its ends justifies the means mentality and absolute certainty in our own righteousness. We win by making the enemy become more like us.

This is not the cold war and it's not a 'struggle of ideas'. The enemy and their potential supporters do not want to become more like us. In fact, that goal makes them angrier than panties on their heads. They want to kill us in order to defeat us, to gain more money, land and power. And we tell them they should give up their goals of gaining money, land and power because we're so good and righteous?

You don't win wars by being good, you win by dismantling the enemy's infrastructure and getting them to genuinely surrender. That's war, civilized and/or not.

When your enemy attacks in a way that's meant to annihilate thousands, with no declared reason and no negotiation, that's a good sign that this is not an ideological war. It's just war. But we should strive to be civilized.

Refraining from humiliating prisoners is far from "incapacitating" ourselves from fighting against terror. It is incumbant upon America to act morally and honorably for its own sake, not just for propaganda purposes. Abu Ghraib offends me and should offend all Americans regardless of whether some Iraqis shrug it off in comparison to Hussein's brutality.

The fact that both Jenin and Abu Ghraib elicited howls of protest doesn't change the moral calculus of those two events. The targeted, limited use of force against armed terrorists in Jenin was justified even with the collateral damage. The naked pyramids of unarmed prisoners (most of whom were picked up on dubious tips from Iraqi informants) in Abu Ghraib were wholly unjustified.

The issue is whether putting a "panty on the head" is standard military policy, not whether it is an appropriate interrogation technique in an exceptional circumstance. Abu Ghraib is the logical conclusion of having no policy against humilation and degradation of prisoners. We should not have American soldiers engaged in such practices - if for no other reason then to preserve their own honor.

This is relevant.

If we want to fight a succesful war against an intrasigent enemy who uses asymetric methods, we should look to methods that have been successful in the past.

The British offer the worst example of how to fight terrorism. They use two methods - appeasement and/or targeting civilians (fighting terrorism with terrorism). They combine their ineffective methods with the assumption that they are fighting, not for practical goals like self-defense, but to defend goodness, righteousness and civilization. As a result, a small issue like bad publicity can destroy their 'ideological' war. Their terror-'fighting' methods have always been unsuccesful. Lately, we appear to be following their lead.

If we believe that the purpose of the Jacksonian war is to deliberately target civilians ( I don't agree that it is, but that's a different issue), then that wouldn't be an effective role to follow. WWII was fought against an intransigent enemy, but it was a direct, declared war.

[We should note that these "Jacksonian" (or Rooseveltian) methods did, you know, win the war. They also paved the way for the Marshall plan, which wouldn't have worked if we'd allowed the fascists to stay in power]

To find an effective method for fighting Islamist asymetric warfare, we have to reach all the way back to Jefferson. But now even Jefferson's methods seem to be too extreme.

The goal of a war can't be to make the enemy good or 'more like us'. The goal of war can only be to win. That's the point of it. If civilized men like Roosevelt and Jefferson are considered to be too extreme, if their successful methods don't fit our ideological goals, then we should ask ouselves if we really have the stomach for waging war. If we don't, then we shouldn't.

I agree Abu Ghraib wasn't justified, and it was offensive for all the reasons you give. But it was an abberation caused by lax discipline, not policy. And it was a huge international deal because it was relentlessly harped on by the media. Otherwise it would be a disgusting breach of discipline and policy which would be prosecuted and cleaned up and steps taken to make sure it didn't happen again, and that would be that. That is "wf"'s point, and my point about what the Iraqis think.

Instead - for most of the West - it has come to stand for the Iraq War, instead of the removal of one of the worst tyrants of the past 50 years or our successful roll-up of terrorist gangs or restoration of law to many communities or our training of the Iraqi military or the formation of the Iraqi government.

I think Michael's position is that removing that clause in the manual will clear the way for more Abu Ghraibs. I think it's to ensure that if we need to interrogate prisoners, we can do so using means that are much more humane than physical torture. And more effective too. I think it's possible that if you received info about the war in proportion to actual events, Abu Ghraib wouldn't be the first thing you think of, because it shouldn't be. Which is not the same as saying it should be excused. It is just not representative of what we are doing.