Special interrogation methods are not necessary to combat the terrorist threat. It is always easy to imagine extra lengths that states could conceivably go to in order to protect their soldiers or civilians. However the ambition of the Geneva Conventions in the wake of World War II was to establish limits. The ‘unlawful combatant’ legal loophole created by the United States threatens to erode the restraint on warfare built up over half a century. The high-profile case of waterboarding involving Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah casts serious doubt on any claim that such methods are effective, and by extension, necessary in combating the terrorist threat. Water-boarded 83 times in one month, Zubaydah’s treatment demonstrates that the absence of the constraints of the Geneva Conventions is a slippery slope to the use of wanton, sadistic violence with no justifiable end (Shane, 2009). Though Zubaydah’s interrogation is believed to have been fruitful in terms of intelligence gathered, there is little reason to believe ordinary interrogation methods would not have been similarly successful over time.