In this article, the author examines another dimension of human rights--the problem of torture. He looks at U.S. commitments to international conventions prohibiting torture in light of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He shows how a position adopted by the Bush administration that these international conventions did not apply to the war against terrorists resulted in the development of interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay that ignored the conventions. These practices later carried over into Iraq. The U.S. has signed the four Geneva Conventions, which expressly prohibit any kind of physical or psychological coercion and torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners of war. In 1996, Congress also passed the War Crimes Act to ban all war crimes, which are referred to as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions? But does the Geneva Convention apply to the War on Terror? The U.S. government had previously taken the position that such covenants did not apply to the prisoners taken during the war in Afghanistan because it was not a war against a nation but rather against terrorist groups, Al Qaeda and the Taliban (which the U.S. had not recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan). Those who oppose the consideration of the use of torture as an interrogation method regard it as a slippery slope that can lead to many other abuses. (Contains 27 endnotes.)