Taliban Detainee Policy

David Rohde's account of his time in captivity by the Taliban (via Sullivan):

They vowed to follow the tenets of Islam that mandate the good treatment of prisoners. In my case, they unquestionably did. They gave me bottled water, let me walk in a small yard each day and never beat me.

Rohde says he came to detest his captors as violent religious nuts. The point here is not that the Taliban are great guys. They've murdered Arab prisoners who worked with Westerners as leverage in ransom negotiations for Western prisoners. The point is that our supposed enemies at least in principle avoid stooping to the level of Bush/Cheney torture policies, which existed in both principle and practice.