The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention and interrogation center at Guantánamo, who had been summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison interrogation procedures. The internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General Antonio Taguba in February, revealed that Miller urged that the commanders in Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence in charge of the prison. The report quoted Miller as recommending that “detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.”

Miller’s concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to “Gitmoize” the prison system in Iraq—to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)

If there's a silver lining to the 24/7 coverage over Abu Ghraib, it is that we are slowly learning that these abuses were in fact the fault of a few undisciplined, poorly led soldiers. The accusation that the practices were part of the "system," or resulted from Army or Pentagon rules, is also being exposed as a political slur.

...there's the fact that while the Sanchez standards did allow short-term sensory deprivation and stress positions with the specific approval of a commanding general in every instance, there is no indication that anyone intended them to be used together. As it happens, requests to use stress positions were made only three times -- and all three were denied. Only about 25 exceptional interrogation requests were made in total -- all for segregation.

Mr. Reed should have his staff get him the Geneva Conventions to read. What he'd learn is that the treatment in his hypothetical question would be barred because U.S. soldiers wearing the uniform would be classified as "prisoners of war." Even tempting detainees who are POWs with a candy bar to answer questions beyond name, rank and serial number violates the Third Geneva Convention. As for his hypothetical "American citizen," he or she might benefit from the civilian protections of the Fourth Geneva Convention depending on circumstances.

...apart from Iraqi soldiers detained in uniform and certain members of Saddam Hussein's chain of command -- most Iraqi detainees are arrested as civilians and fall under the protection not of the Third Geneva Convention but of the Fourth.