It's never acceptable to target civilians. It violates the Geneva Accords it violates the international law of war and it violates all principles of morality.

Human-rights advocates for example claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.

The World Health Organisation has a lot of its medical experts sitting in Geneva while hospitals in Africa have no drugs and desperate patients are forced to seek medication on the black market.

Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.

Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government education and other services for the people of Iraq.