Slippery slope to Abu Ghraib

Los Angeles Times: In an unusual moment of public introspection, President Bush told a recent news conference that "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq, is Abu Ghraib. We've been paying for that for a long period of time."
Apparently, planners in the Pentagon weren't listening to the president's remarks, or failed to understand their larger import: This country harms its own image -- and puts its troops in harm's way -- when it humiliates and degrades prisoners.
On Monday, the Los Angeles Times' Julian E. Barnes reported that the Defense Department, over the objection of the State Department, has decided to omit from a new Army Field Manual on interrogation a prohibition against "humiliating and degrading treatment" contained in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.
Unfortunately, there is a precedent for this deletion. In a 2002 order, Bush wrote that because Article 3 was designed to deal with conflicts that were not "international" in scope but rather civil conflicts, it didn't apply to al-Qaida or Taliban detainees.
Cramping interrogators' style
More recently, Pentagon officials -- supported by Vice President Dick Cheney's office -- apparently have come to believe that including the prohibition in the manual would cramp the style of interrogators and create an "unintentional sanctuary" for al-Qaida fighters. For example, one official complained, adherence to Article 3 might make it difficult to "punch the buttons of a Muslim male" by questioning his manhood.
Even if this were true -- and we doubt whether verbal insults constitute "humiliating and degrading treatment" -- the alternative is worse. Omitting Article 3 from the interrogation manual not only would be handing the enemies of the United States a propaganda victory, but by giving interrogators an inch of discretion, it would be encouraging some of them to take a mile. Such slippage isn't just a matter of speculation. It's what happened at Abu Ghraib.
Any plan to omit Article 3 from the interrogation manual justifies the same sort of serious second thoughts. If Rumsfeld can't see that, his newly reflective boss should set him straight.