In an antiterrorist war that at the time was initially launched as Operation Infinite Justice, it is infinitely difficult to reconcile oneself to the pictures of chained and humiliated Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners at the U.S. Guantanamo base on Cuba. The pictures resemble an attempt to satisfy a primitive thirst for revenge and convince the Americans that the Bush administration has not only succeeded in removing a regime of religious madmen in out-of-the-way Afghanistan, but also in taking prisoner some of those responsible for the terrorist acts on that day in September. 
	
	
 The U.S. and most recently the British governments reject the suggestion that the prisoners are being harmed, but this does not alter the fact that the pictures of hooded prisoners in chains are in themselves enough to paint a picture of a United States that in the name of self-righteousness - and equally worryingly: without any great amount of debate - has allowed itself to infringe international rules. 
	
	
 This impression is reinforced by the fact that for the time being at least the United States has ignored the Geneva Convention and refused to treat those taken prisoner as prisoners of war - something to which they have a right - until a competent court has decided differently. 
	
	
 Instead the superpower has entered a legal fog where the prisoners have been stamped with a nonsense term in international law: "battlefield prisoners." As such they face the prospect of being subjected to the due course of law and in the final analysis perhaps sentenced to death in closed military courts instead of in open courts, as is the right of prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Convention. 
	
	
 For most people it will of course be difficult to mobilize any great degree of understanding for those responsible for the bloody terrorism in the United States on that day in September, but what is at issue here is that at the present moment principles are at stake that could have far-reaching repercussions for the future war against terrorism. 
	
	
 With its behavior, therefore, the United States is not only compromising the image of the war against terrorism as an expression of a higher form of justice, but also of itself as an unshakeable defender of this same justice. This will undoubtedly rub off on the superpower's allies, including Denmark. And for this reason, too, they have a moral duty to speak out, as Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, among others, did yesterday. Otherwise they face the risk not only of undermining the legitimacy of their own antiterrorism war at present, but also of sending out a signal that despots around the world will know how to exploit. 
	
	
 Many of them have already demonstrated great skill in their own behavior when it comes to exploiting the West's fear of terrorism.