The public is counting on Congress to assemble a broad and accurate overview of the abuses at prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so that the persistent stories of what would be clear rights violations can be verified and understood. Congress must respond energetically not only to protect the rights of prisoners in U.S. custody but to safeguard U.S. troops who may face capture in future wars.

Absent horrifying pictures and the shock of the new, recent reports of abuse have not received the same level of attention as that at Abu Ghraib prison, but they are deeply disturbing nonetheless. Defense Intelligence Agency agents, for instance, reported months after the abuse became known at Abu Ghraib that members of a U.S. special operations task force abused prisoners in Iraq then threatened the agents who saw the abuse. The two DIA agents say they saw interrogators punch a prisoner in the face so that the prisoner needed medical attention and saw others at the Temporary Detention Facility in Baghdad with burn marks on their backs and still others complaining of kidney pain.

Last week, The Associated Press reported that an FBI official told the Army’s top criminal investigator about what he called “highly aggressive” interrogation methods used at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay detention center, going back at least as far as 2002, that included prolonged isolation, physical abuse and humiliation. The week before that, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to The New York Times, concluded the U.S. military used interrogation tactics equivalent to torture against prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay center. The report also charged doctors and nurses there with violating medical ethics by briefing interrogators on the mental health and vulnerabilities of the prisoners.

In response, U.S. officials sound much as they did when the Abu Ghraib photographs were released to a horrified world. Maybe some under-trained guard acted too aggressively; the United States won’t stand for it; there are strict orders not to let this happen again, etc. For the U.S. public, these responses do not suggest the abuses have been stopped. For Iraqi and nearby Middle East countries already suspicious of U.S. motives, these answers do not rise even to the level of inadequate.

Certainly, the Bush administration is correct to observe that a stateless enemy changes the calculation of war, but it doesn’t remove the reasons for the just treatment of prisoners under the Geneva Conventions, as U.S. courts are concluding. Rather than creating a new generation of terrorists and a new excuse for mistreating American prisoners in some future war, the Bush administration and Congress should be eager to demonstrate that these images and stories have driven them to action.

They should see this battle as every bit as serious as the ones the troops are fighting in Iraq.