Posted at Slacktivist, natch:

. . . if we, somehow, excuse this behavior on the grounds that they were bad people, they killed Americans, all that kind of stuff, then we put ourselves on the same moral … plane that they are. We cannot do that. The reason why we are there is to give them a different life from the kind of treatment that they got from Saddam Hussein. […] CALLER: Hello. Senator McCain, do you believe that the Muslim teachings regarding their culture has any understanding of the Geneva Convention and our American soldiers? McCAIN: I believe that people who are in the Iraqi army who are many of these prisoners fully understand that we abide by the Geneva Conventions. We expect governments to abide by them. I don’t remember whether the Iraqi government was a signatory or not. And it doesn’t matter too much to me whether some Muslims understand them. What does matter to me is that we understand them. If I can leave you with one point, we distinguish ourselves by the way we treat our enemies. And that means we are a nation that doesn’t employ those same kinds of torture and mistreatment because we’re better than that. [emph. added] Larry King Live, 11 May 2004