Le Monde: THE OUTLAW BUSH ADMINISTRATION

"Some people will say that no war is clean, that sadism is unfortunately inherent in human nature. But that is precisely why there are rules to protect combatants from individual acts of barbarism, or worse yet, from barbarism sanctioned by the state. Indeed this war above all others is a war of ideas: it loses all legitimacy if civil or military authorities decide to trample on human rights. . . .
A defeat for the United States in Iraq will entail grave consequences. Certainly,certain traditional "allies" of the United States who preferred to accommodate the existence of Saddam Hussein, and who did everything possible to prevent the UN from participating in this war, will bear some responsibility for this defeat. But such a defeat will be a defeat for all of the West and for all Arabs who hope for peace and political pluralism.
But it's even worse than a defeat. The pictures from Abu Ghraib threaten not only the moral authority of America, but our universal values, the first of which is the dignity of every human being. These images create the possibility of a world in which no state, no group, can ever again intervene anywhere in the name of human rights. These images betray all of us and weaken all of us in relation to a common enemy: a global, omnipresent enemy who has declared war on all of us and who neither negotiates nor places any value on human life. That enemy is Islamic totalitarianism."