Congress's definition of torture in those laws - the infliction of severe mental or physical pain - leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

We can guess that the unacceptable conduct of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib resulted in part from the dangerous state of affairs on the ground in a theater of war.

In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.

Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.

Under the Geneva Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating.

American soldiers had to guard prisoners on the inside while receiving mortar and weapons fire from the outside. Guantanamo is distant from any battlefield, making it far more secure.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

President Bush and his commanders announced early in the conflict that the Conventions applied.

Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs.

If the Court were to extend its reach to the base, judges could begin managing conditions of confinement, interrogation methods, and the use of information.

The Screamingflashed me back to a timewhen mom and dad were still togetherif you could call miles apart together.

If we truly loved ourselves, we’d never harm another. That is a truly revolutionary, celebratory mode of self-care.

Only the good die young, the bad petite-mort

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.

Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.

I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.

The only failures are those who fail to try.

All this I bear, for, what I seek, I know: Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm: Endless extinction of unhappy hates.

I'm big on the importance of science, particularly right now at this point in time when there's sort of a systematic rejection of science by a lot of people in America.