Why are new regulations on the treatment of prisoners classified?

In an unattributed editorial dated March 11, 2005, the New York times revealed something that disturbs me highly.

It was good to learn yesterday that the military commander in Iraq has issued definitive rules about how to treat captives in American prison camps. Unfortunately, that was about the only good news in the newest Pentagon report on prisoner abuse, actually a 21-page summary of a larger, classified study by the Navy inspector general of interrogation rules in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just consider that it took more than a year after the military says it first learned of the nightmare at Abu Ghraib to issue the new rules. And don't ask what they are, because they're classified.

Why? Why are rules for the treatment of prisoners classified? I think I remember someone saying that they didn't want potential prisoners to know how they will be treated so that they will have the upper hand.

i find that counter to American standards of ethics. Personally, I think that a prisoner has the right to know what treatment is or isn't legal under the laws of the government of their captors.

Human rights are supposed to be the corner stone of our culture. Does that mean the human rights of only Americans? Why? What makes Americans more deserving of humane treatment than other people?

Can anybody out there answer these questions for me?