Torture and Truth

America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror

Bibliographic Data

ID9824953
AuthorsLawrence D Freedman, Lawrence Freedman (corresponding author), Seymour M Hersh, Stephen Levinson (0000-0002-0563-6927), Sanford Levinson
Year2005
Volume84
Issue1
Pages183
Publication date2005-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofTorture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, Mark Danner, 2004
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20034230
OpenAlexW384915158
LanguageEN

In the spring of 2004, graphic photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured by American soldiers in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison flashed around the world, provoking outraged debate. Did they depict the rogue behavior of few bad apples? Or did they in fact reveal that the US government had decided to use brutal tactics in the on terror? The images are shocking, but they do not tell the whole story. The abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents but the result of a chain of deliberate decisions and failures of command. To understand how Hooded Man and Leashed Man could have happened, Mark Danner turns to the documents that are collected for the first time in this book. These documents include secret government memos, some never before published, that portray a fierce argument within the Bush administration over whether al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners were protected by the Geneva Conventions and how far the US could go in interrogating them. There are also official reports on abuses at Abu Ghraib by the International Committee of the Red Cross, by US Army investigators, and by an independent panel chaired by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger. In sifting this evidence, Danner traces the path by which harsh methods of interrogation approved for suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Guantanamo migrated to Iraq as resistance to the US occupation grew and US casualties mounted. Yet as Mark Danner writes, the real scandal here political: it is not about revelation or disclosure but about the failure, once wrongdoing disclosed, of politicians, officials, the press, and, ultimately, citizens to act. For once we know the story the photos and documents tell, we are left with the questions they pose for our democratic society: Does fighting a new kind of war on terror justify torture? Who will we hold responsible for deciding to pursue such a policy, and what will be the moral and political costs to the country

Criminology · Human rights · Iraq war · Political science · Spanish Civil War · Terrorism · Torture · War on terror · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification

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