Download or read book The Torture Memos written by David Cole and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 16, 2009, the Justice Department released never-before-seen secret memos describing, in graphic detail, the brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration's "war on terror." Now, for the first time, the key documents are compiled in one remarkable volume, showing that the United States government's top attorneys were instrumental in rationalizing acts of torture and cruelty, employing chillingly twisted logic and Orwellian reasoning to authorize what the law absolutely forbids. This collection gives readers an unfiltered look at the tactics approved for use in the CIA's secret overseas prisons—including forcing detainees to stay awake for eleven days straight, slamming them against walls, stripping them naked, locking them in a small box with insects to manipulate their fears, and, of course, waterboarding—and at the incredible arguments advanced to give them a green light. Originally issued in secret by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005, the documents collected here have been edited only to eliminate repetition. They reflect, in their own words, the analysis that guided the legal architects of the Bush administration's interrogation policies. Renowned legal scholar David Cole's introductory essay tells the story behind the memos, and presents a compelling case that instead of demanding that the CIA conform its conduct to the law, the nation's top lawyers contorted the law to conform to the CIA's abusive and patently illegal conduct. He argues eloquently that official accountability for these legal wrongs is essential if the United States is to restore fidelity to the rule of law.
Download or read book The Torture Papers written by Karen J. Greenberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-03 with total page 1306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents US Government attempts to justify torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices in ongoing hostilities.
Download or read book Why Torture Doesn t Work written by Shane O'Mara and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
Download or read book Torture Team written by Philippe Sands and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 9/11. George W. Bush's administration declared that they were going to have to work through 'the dark side'. And they did: they turned their backs on international law and on America's history of respecting human rights. They wanted only legal advice that made it okay to torture, and they made sure they got it. Voices of dissent were sidelined, while low level officials brainstormed interrogation techniques and took their lead from Jack Bauer in 24. In Torture Team, Philippe Sands tracks down and interviews those responsible, and makes a compelling case that, in an ugly blotch on Americda's recent past, war crimes were committed for which no one has yet been held to account.
Download or read book Literature and the Law of Nations 1580 1680 written by Christopher Norton Warren and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680 is a literary history of international law, which seeks to revise the ways scholars understand early modern English literature in relation to the history of international law.
Download or read book Official CIA Manual Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual written by Central Intelligence Agency CIA and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This manual, the HUMAN RESOURCE EXPLOITATION TRAINING MANUAL, dated 1982, is the source of much of the INTERROGATION TRAINING GIVEN OUT TO VARIOUS CIA TEAMS AROUND THE WORLD. It describes interrogation techniques, including, among other things, coercive counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources. This is the oldest manual, and describes the use of abusive techniques, as exemplified by two references to the use of electric shock, in addition to use of threats and fear, sensory deprivation, and isolation.
Download or read book The Dark Side written by Jane Mayer and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-05-08 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made self-destructive decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In spellbinding detail, Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions by which key players, namely Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, exploited September 11 to further a long held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment. With a new afterward. One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year National Bestseller National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A Best Book of the Year: Salon, Slate, The Economist, The Washington Post, Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Download or read book Torture and Truth written by Mark Danner and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2004-10-31 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the torture photographs in color and the full texts of the secret administration memos on torture and the investigative reports on the abuses at Abu Ghraib. 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 "a few bad apples"? Or did they in fact reveal that the US government had decided to use brutal tactics in the "war 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 Guant‡namo "migrated" to Iraq as resistance to the US occupation grew and US casualties mounted. Yet as Mark Danner writes, the real scandal here is political: it "is not about revelation or disclosure but about the failure, once wrongdoing is 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?
Download or read book Getting Away with Torture written by Christopher H. Pyle and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the paper trail of torture memos that led to abuses at Guantanámo, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq.
Download or read book Law and the Long War written by Benjamin Wittes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-06-19 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative assessment of the new laws of war and a sensible and sophisticated roadmap for the future of liberty in the Age of Terror America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda, but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people during this global conflict. As debate continues to rage over the legality and ethics of war, Benjamin Wittes enters the fray with a sober-minded exploration of law in wartime that is definitive, accessible, and nonpartisan. Outlining how this country came to its current impasse over human rights and counterterrorism, Law and the Long War paves the way toward fairer, more accountable rules for a conflict without end.
Download or read book The Terror Presidency Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration written by Jack Goldsmith and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A key advisor to President Bush recounts his political clashes with powerful administration figures when he questioned the choices of his predecessors about the way the war on terror was being conducted, in an account in which he cites historical parallels.
Download or read book The Torture Report written by Sid Jacobson and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The more who learn the truth the better off the country will be, because there is no better safeguard against the revival of torture than a well-informed public." -- Jane Mayer, from the Introduction On December 9, 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report that strongly condemned the CIA for its secret and brutal use of torture in the treatment of prisoners captured in the "war on terror" during the George W. Bush administration. This deeply researched and fully documented investigation caused monumental controversy, interest, and concern, and starkly highlighted both how ineffective the program was as well as the lengths to which the CIA had gone to conceal it. In The Torture Report, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colóse their celebrated graphic-storytelling abilities to make the damning torture report accessible, finally allowing Americans to lift the veil and fully understand the crimes committed by the CIA.
Download or read book War by Other Means written by John Yoo and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key legal architect of the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 delivers a fascinating insider account of the war on terror. While America reeled from the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001, John Yoo and a skeletal staff of the Office of Legal Counsel found themselves on the phone with the White House. In a series of memos, Yoo offered his legal opinions on the president’s authority to respond, and in the process had an almost unmatched impact on America’s fight against terrorism. His analysis led to many of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies, including detention at Guantanamo Bay, coercive interrogation, and military trials for terrorists, preemptive attacks, and the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program. In fascinating detail, Yoo takes us inside the corridors of power and examines specific cases, from John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla to an American al-Qaeda leader assassinated by a CIA pilotless drone in the deserts of Yemen. “At its core, War by Other Means offers spirited, detailed and often enlightening accounts of the decision-making process behind the key 2001-03 legal decisions.” —The Washington Post “Unambiguous and combative, Yoo’s philosophy is sure to spark further debate.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The United States and Torture written by Marjorie Cohn and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture has been a topic of national discussion ever since it was revealed that “enhanced interrogation techniques” had been authorized as part of the war on terror. The United States and Torture provides us with a larger lens through which to view America's policy of torture, one that dissects America's long relationship with interrogation and torture, which roots back to the 1950s and has been applied, mostly in secret, to “enemies,” ever since. The United States and Torture opens with a compelling preface by Sister Dianna Ortiz, who describes the unimaginable treatment she endured in Guatemala in 1987 at the hands of the the Guatemalan government, which was supported by the United States. Following Ortiz's preface, an interdisciplinary panel of experts offers one of the most comprehensive examinations of torture to date, beginning with the Cold War era and ending with today's debate over accountability for torture.
Download or read book Less Safe Less Free written by David Cole and published by . This book was released on 2009-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliantly conceived critique by two of the leading US constitutional scholars who argue that the Bush administration's preemptive approach to domestic and international security has not only compromised national security but led to the heightened threat of terrorist attacks. Cole and Lubel, through groundbreaking analysis of efforts employed in the name of protecting its citizens, expose the government's record of empty successes, coupled with the resentment it has generated, has left the US less safe. The book concludes by proposing alternative preventative strategies.
Download or read book Getting Away with Torture written by Reed Brody and published by . This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recommendations -- Background: official sanction for crimes against detainees -- Torture of detainees in US counterterrorism operations -- Individual criminal responsibility -- Appendix: foreign state proceedings regarding US detainee mistreatment -- Acknowledgments and methodology.
Download or read book Courting Disaster written by Marc Thiessen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was tasked to write President George W. Bush’s 2006 speech explaining the CIA’s interrogation program and why Congress should authorize it. Few know more about these CIA operations than Thiessen. In his new book, Courting Disaster, Thiessen documents just how effective the CIA’s interrogations were in foiling attacks on America, penetrating al-Qaeda’s high command, and providing our military with actionable intelligence.
