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Author: James P. Pfiffner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317250346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
After September 11, 2001 the Bush Administration decided that the most important intelligence about terrorism would come from the interrogation of captives suspected of terrorism. As a result, many detainees were subject to harsh interrogation techniques that at times amounted to torture. Here, James P. Pfiffner authoritatively examines the policy directives, operational decisions, and leadership actions of the Bush Administration that reversed centuries of US policy on the treatment of enemy prisoners. He shows how the serious reservations of career military lawyers about these policies were overcome by the political appointees of the Bush Administration. Pfiffner then analyses the philosophical and legal underpinnings of the policies and practices that have led to the denunciation of the United States' policies by its allies and adversaries throughout the world. Looking ahead, Pfiffner anticipates Obama administration policy changes to restore U.S. credibility and accountability. In all, Torture as Public Policy is a model of detailed policy analysis that demonstrates how greatly public policy matters beyond the back corridors of bureaucracy.
Author: James P. Pfiffner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317250346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Get Book Here
Book Description
After September 11, 2001 the Bush Administration decided that the most important intelligence about terrorism would come from the interrogation of captives suspected of terrorism. As a result, many detainees were subject to harsh interrogation techniques that at times amounted to torture. Here, James P. Pfiffner authoritatively examines the policy directives, operational decisions, and leadership actions of the Bush Administration that reversed centuries of US policy on the treatment of enemy prisoners. He shows how the serious reservations of career military lawyers about these policies were overcome by the political appointees of the Bush Administration. Pfiffner then analyses the philosophical and legal underpinnings of the policies and practices that have led to the denunciation of the United States' policies by its allies and adversaries throughout the world. Looking ahead, Pfiffner anticipates Obama administration policy changes to restore U.S. credibility and accountability. In all, Torture as Public Policy is a model of detailed policy analysis that demonstrates how greatly public policy matters beyond the back corridors of bureaucracy.
Author: Christopher H. Pyle
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 451
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Book Description
Follows the paper trail of torture memos that led to abuses at Guantanámo, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq.
Author: Mark Fallon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1942872801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
The book the government doesn’t want you to read. President Trump wants to bring back torture. This is why he’s wrong. In his more than thirty years as an NCIS special agent and counterintelligence officer, Mark Fallon has investigated some of the most significant terrorist operations in US history, including the first bombing of the World Trade Center and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. He knew well how to bring criminals to justice, all the while upholding the Constitution. But in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, it was clear that America was dealing with a new kind of enemy. Soon after the attacks, Fallon was named Deputy Commander of the newly formed Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), created to probe the al-Qaeda terrorist network and bring suspected terrorists to trial. Fallon was determined to do the job the right way, but with the opening of Guantanamo Bay and the arrival of its detainees, he witnessed a shadowy dark side of the intelligence community that emerged, peddling a snake-oil they called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In Unjustifiable Means, Fallon reveals this dark side of the United States government, which threw our own laws and international covenants aside to become a nation that tortured—sanctioned by the highest-ranking members of the Bush Administration, the Army, and the CIA, many of whom still hold government positions, although none have been held accountable. Until now. Follow along as Fallon pieces together how this shadowy group incrementally—and secretly—loosened the reins on interrogation techniques at Gitmo and later, Abu-Ghraib, and black sites around the world. He recounts how key psychologists disturbingly violated human rights and adopted harsh practices to fit the Bush administration’s objectives even though such tactics proved ineffective, counterproductive, and damaging to our own national security. Fallon untangles the powerful decisions the administration’s legal team—the Bush “War Counsel”—used to provide the cover needed to make torture the modus operandi of the United States government. As Fallon says, “You could clearly see it coming, you could wave your arms and yell, but there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to stop it.” Unjustifiable Means is hard-hitting, raw, and explosive, and forces the spotlight back on to how America lost its way. Fallon also exposes those responsible for using torture under the guise of national security, as well as those heroes who risked it all to oppose the program. By casting a defining light on one of America’s darkest periods, Mark Fallon weaves a cautionary tale for those who wield the power to reinstate torture.
Author: T. Lightcap
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137439165
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
The United States' use of torture and harsh interrogation techniques during the "War on Terror" has sparked fervent debate among citizens and scholars surrounding the human rights of war criminals. Does all force qualify as "necessary and appropriate" in this period of political unrest? Examining Torture brings together some of the best recent scholarship on the incidence of torture in a comparative and international context. The contributors to this volume use both quantitative and qualitative studies to examine the causes and consequences of torture policies and the resulting public opinion. Policy makers as well as scholars and those concerned with human rights will find this collection invaluable.
Author: James P. Pfiffner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317250354
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
After September 11, 2001 the Bush Administration decided that the most important intelligence about terrorism would come from the interrogation of captives suspected of terrorism. As a result, many detainees were subject to harsh interrogation techniques that at times amounted to torture. Here, James P. Pfiffner authoritatively examines the policy directives, operational decisions, and leadership actions of the Bush Administration that reversed centuries of US policy on the treatment of enemy prisoners. He shows how the serious reservations of career military lawyers about these policies were overcome by the political appointees of the Bush Administration. Pfiffner then analyses the philosophical and legal underpinnings of the policies and practices that have led to the denunciation of the United States' policies by its allies and adversaries throughout the world. Looking ahead, Pfiffner anticipates Obama administration policy changes to restore U.S. credibility and accountability. In all, Torture as Public Policy is a model of detailed policy analysis that demonstrates how greatly public policy matters beyond the back corridors of bureaucracy.
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.”
Author: M. Cherif Bassiouni
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789400000056
Category : Human rights
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The United States has historically been regarded as a moral leader opening the pathway for human rights. The country which for so long has struggled for the establishment of the rule of law - as well as to be a model for other nations in observing it - has, since September11, 2001, committed abhorrent practices of torture, which the US has fought against when committed by others. What seems astonishing is that such practices took place within a climate of significant public indifference, and even with some public support. Time and again, observers of tragic historic events reveal that it is not so much the evil doing of the few which allows the worst atrocities to occur, as it is the indifference of the many. The Bush administration assumed neither moral nor legal responsibility, and in the end, it is hard-put to show what positive results may have been obtained for so many transgressions. The history of law and legal institutions has long proven the error of accepting the Machiavellian principle that the ends justify the means. In addition, the proposition that torture prevents terrorism cannot be proven true. Under torture, people tend to say whatever is expected of them. However, this is not only about pragmatic pursuits. It is about morality and ethics. The judgement has already been made that torture is unlawful. In addition, the Guantanamo Bay practices and the unlawful seizure of persons in different parts of the world by the CIA - after which they are transferred to countries where they are tortured - have proven that hard evidence is highly unlikely to be attained under torture. Most of the detainees have been proven to have no connection to terrorism and most of them have been released because they were wrongly arrested. Guantanamo represents a failed policy that has done much damage to the moral authority of the US. Aberrant views of torture as necessary because the ends justify the means have not generated much negative reaction from the legal profession - despite the fact that the 1984 Convention against Torture, the Geneva Conventions, the US Constitution, and the laws of the US have clearly prohibited such practices. This book examines such questions as: Are the events of September 11, 2001 enough to have us reopen the question of whether the medieval practice of torture should be allowed? Are they enough to have its institutionalized practice undermine the integrity of the US legal process and system of law, and to undermine the country's moral leadership in the world? The answer to these questions has to be a resounding and unqualified no. The US must, therefore, take quick and confident action to make amends and to hold responsible those who promoted a policy of torture. M. Cherif Bassiouni, in April 2012, received the Wolfgang Friedmann Memorial Award which is given by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law to a distinguished scholar or practitioner who has made outstanding contributions to the field of international law. *** ...exquisitely detailed the way in which American governmental institutions bypassed international law in order to allow the creation of a policy that allowed torture. Bassiouni paints a striking portrait of the abuses and violations of international law by Bush's Administration, the way these actions strike at the heart of the American tradition, and the actions that must be taken to save America's collective conscience. - Prof. Karen Greenberg, Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law
Author: Karen J. Greenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139447034
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
As a result of the work assembling the documents, memoranda, and reports that constitute the material in The Torture Papers the question of the rationale behind the Bush administration's decision to condone the use of coercive interrogation techniques in the interrogation of detainees suspected of terrorist connections was raised. The condoned use of torture in any society is questionable but its use by the United States, a liberal democracy that champions human rights and is a party to international conventions forbidding torture, has sparked an intense debate within America. The Torture Debate in America captures these arguments with essays from individuals in different discipines. This volume is divided into two sections with essays covering all sides of the argument from those who embrace absolute prohibition of torture to those who see it as a viable option in the war on terror and with documents complementing the essays.
Author: Alfred W. McCoy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
Many Americans have condemned the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government. During the Cold War, McCoy argues, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject’s resistance to interrogation. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA revived these harsh methods, while U.S. media was flooded with seductive images that normalized torture for many Americans. Ten years later, the U.S. had failed to punish the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, and continued to exploit intelligence extracted under torture by surrogates from Somalia to Afghanistan. Although Washington has publicly distanced itself from torture, disturbing images from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America’s moral authority as a world leader.
Author: Joseph K. Young
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548095
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Experts in the intelligence community say that torture is ineffective. Yet much of the public appears unconvinced: surveys show that nearly half of Americans think that torture can be acceptable for counterterrorism purposes. Why do people persist in supporting torture—and can they be persuaded to change their minds? In Tortured Logic, Erin M. Kearns and Joseph K. Young draw upon a novel series of group experiments to understand how and why the average citizen might come to support the use of torture techniques. They find evidence that when torture is depicted as effective in the media, people are more likely to approve of it. Their analysis weighs variables such as the ethnicity of the interrogator and the suspect; the salience of one’s own mortality; and framing by experts. Kearns and Young also examine who changes their opinions about torture and how, demonstrating that only some individuals have fixed views while others have more malleable beliefs. They argue that efforts to reduce support for torture should focus on convincing those with fluid views that torture is ineffective. The book features interviews with experienced interrogators and professionals working in the field to contextualize its findings. Bringing empirical rigor to a fraught topic, Tortured Logic has important implications for understanding public perceptions of counterterrorism strategy.
