[fiatmoney]

You would expect this to happen. Things like the Geneva Conventions are artifacts of roughly symmetric wars, where one could reasonably expect treatment & retaliation to be reciprocal. This explains things like restrictions on, eg, hollow point bullets - it's easy enough for everyone to use them, and it only serves to increase the severity of the conflict with no change in relative outcomes.

Now that the US doesn't actually fear having large numbers of troops captured, and even if they did their opponents have no desire to reciprocate treatment, they're "free" to engage in whatever horrific behavior they would like, and vise versa.

Lind is good on this: http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Warfare-Handbook-William-Li...