SASless,
You can't judge the quality or accuracy of journalism by ratings or circulation. The majority are ignorant, boorish, and ill-educated, and the most popular TV programmes and newspapers are popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator. If Fox or the Sun say something, it's a pretty clear indicator that it's wrong, not that it's right.
I'd also point out that Americans probably don't understand hearts and minds, because they've never been any good at winning them. Contrast the different approaches of the Brits in Malaya and your lot in Vietnam. The British forces have traditionally done very well in counter insurgency ops, by contrast, by carefully combining decisive and pretty uncompromising force against the enemy with a much more fluffy approach to their communities.
16B,
We certainly need to modify the Geneva Conventions so that terrorists can be dealt with appropriately, but we must ensure that we don't treat anyone picked up as a potential terrorist simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor must we lose sight of the fact that we are fighting under the British flag, representing Western values of decency and civilisation. If we resort to casual and indiscriminate brutality, surely we are furthering the enemy's aims. Isn't it the case that anyone who beats a prisoner to death isn't one of us, he's a traitor and an enemy to the values we're fighting for, and fighting to spread.
Maple 01,
You can't compare what would have been OK had the Cold War turned hot, with what's OK now, in a peace-keeping/peace enforcement situation, and when public mores are so different. Moreover, while our interrogators might have been happy to disorientate, sleep deprive, segregate and threaten enemy prisoners, it's never been the British way to beat people so badly that they die. That's the kind of treatment the South African Police or East Germans used to mete out.