Iraqis are right to investigate the treatment of 170 emaciated prisoners found in Baghdad recently. But the quick response to the mistreatment of Iraqis held by Iraqis contrasts with the foot dragging in the United States over prisoners it has held in Iraq and at undisclosed locations around the world.

Although the country’s interior minister, Bayan Jabr, played down allegations of torture at the prison, an Iraqi commission has already launched an investigation. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has said the inquiry has been expanded to review detentions nationwide. The U.S. Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation are assisting in the review.

Recently, American soldiers found a secret police prison in central Iraq. While chasing a young boy, they came across the building where 170 men, mostly Sunnis, were being held. A Voice of America journalist who saw the prisoners said many had bruises and cuts on their faces and bodies. They also appeared to have been starved for some time.

Mr. Jabr said many of the men were suspected of bombings and that reports of their mistreatment was exaggerated. “Nobody was beheaded or killed,” he said.

When reports of prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. captors in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba first arose administration officials dismissed them as overblown. Then they said strong tactics were necessary to deal with such dangerous people.

A United Nations Human Rights Commission team just last week canceled a trip to the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because the United States refused to let U.N. inspectors meet with prisoners in private. The head of the team, Manfred Nowak, told the BBC he didn’t need “a guided tour,” but wanted to talk freely with prisoners to determine if they are being mistreated. The U.S. refusal of an unconditional visit showed the country had something to hide, he added.

When the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a measure banning the use of cruel and inhuman treatment against people in U.S. custody, President Bush threatened to veto the defense spending bill. Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied lawmakers to make an exception for the CIA. Then there was the memo saying detainees in the war on terror are not subject to the Geneva Conventions and that torturing someone up to but not past the point of “organ failure and death” is OK in order to make them talk.

U.S. officials are right to quickly condemn the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi captors, but their words would carry more weight if they were not also arguing so forcefully that this country must be allowed to torture some people some of the time.