George W. Bush calls them an ‘alternative set of procedures’, vital tools needed ‘to protect the American people and our allies’. American Torture reveals how torture became standard practice in today’s War on Terror.
‘Tools’ including being forced standing for up to forty hours, sleep deprivation for weeks on end and dousing naked prisoners with ice are undeniably torture, and they are used by the United States of America. Long before Abu Ghraib became a household name, the US military and CIA used torture with impunity at home and abroad. Billions of dollars were spent during the Cold War studying, refining, then teaching these techniques to American interrogators and to foreign officers charged with keeping Communism at bay. This book writes the history of these methods and their invention and adoption by US military personnel.
Table of Content
List of Acronyms
In Their Own Words
1. A Climate of Fear
2. Stress Inoculation
3. Codifying Cruelty
4. The Phoenix Factor
5. In America’s Backyard
6. The Human Cost
7. Alive and Legal
8. The Gloves Come Off, Part I
9. Guantánamo
10. The Gloves Come Off, Part II
The Dual State
Appendix I: Human Resource Exploitation
Training Manual – 1983
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Michael Otterman is an award-winning freelance journalist and human rights consultant. He was a recent visiting scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage (Pluto, 2010) and American Torture (Pluto, 2007).
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