The Torture Memos

The Torture Memos PDF Author: David Cole
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595584935
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
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.

The Torture Memos

The Torture Memos PDF Author: David Cole
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595584935
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
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.

The Torture Papers

The Torture Papers PDF Author: Karen J. Greenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521853248
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1306

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Book Description
Documents US Government attempts to justify torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices in ongoing hostilities.

Why Torture Doesn’t Work

Why Torture Doesn’t Work PDF Author: Shane O'Mara
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674743903
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
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.”

Torture Team

Torture Team PDF Author: Philippe Sands
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014191937X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
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.

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680 PDF Author: Christopher Norton Warren
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198719345
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
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.

The Dark Side

The Dark Side PDF Author: Jane Mayer
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307456501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
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

Torture and Truth

Torture and Truth PDF Author: Mark Danner
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
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?

The Memo

The Memo PDF Author: John Hope Bryant
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1523084588
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
True power in this world comes from economic independence, but too many people have too much month left at the end of their money. John Hope Bryant, founder and CEO of Operation HOPE, illuminates the path toward liberation that is hiding in plain sight. His message is simple: the supermajority of people who live in poverty, whom Bryant calls the invisible class, as well as millions in the struggling middle class, haven't gotten “the memo”—until now. Building on his personal experience of rising up from economically disadvantaged circumstances and his work with Operation HOPE, Bryant teaches readers five rules that lay the foundation for achieving financial freedom. He emphasizes the inseparable connection between “inner capital” (mindset, relationships, knowledge, and spirit) and “outer capital” (financial wealth and property). “If you have inner capital,” Bryant writes, “you can never be truly poor. If you lack inner capital, all the money in the world cannot set you free.” Bryant gives readers tools for empowerment by covering everything from achieving basic financial literacy to investing in positive relationships and approaching wealth with a completely new attitude. He makes this bold and controversial claim: “Once you have satisfied your basic sustenance needs—food, water, health, and a roof over your head—poverty has more to do with your head than your wallet.” Bryant wants to restore readers' “silver rights,” giving them the ability to succeed and prosper no matter what very real roadblocks society puts in their way. We have more power than we realize, if only we can recognize and claim it. “We are our first capital,” Bryant writes. “We are the CEOs of our own lives.”

Official CIA Manual: Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual

Official CIA Manual: Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual PDF Author: Central Intelligence Agency CIA
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1794752773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
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.

Law and the Long War

Law and the Long War PDF Author: Benjamin Wittes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440632847
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
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.