[MrB]

It is our own military who is most endangered when we do not uphold the Geneva Convention fully.

Seriously, you're avoiding my point. You assert that if we DON'T uphold the Geneva Convention fully, our people will be subject to mistreatment outlawed by the convention. I don't see how you can get around the assertion of the converse, that our upholding of the convention will protect our people from mistreatment. And this latter simply is NOT true.

[George W. Bush]

You assert that if we DON'T uphold the Geneva Convention fully

In strict legal terms, the Bush administration is correct to assert that the Geneva does not protect non-uniformed combatants. This is well established among the militaries of many countries. I mention it only because of the perception that western nations do not employ barbaric means like these and that we delegitimize our own moral and legal authority if we resort to torture to gather military and battlefield intel. The "Achmed's-Ticking-Bomb" scenario is not relevant because we are using torture interrogations when there is no Ticking Bomb. Just Achmed may have info that we want, mostly on insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan or info about the internal al-Qaeda network, their finances, their plans, their location.