American Torture

From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond

Michael Otterman

Torture violates more than international law and fundamental human rights-it radicalises enemies, undermines credibility and yields unreliable intelligence.

Opinion

Michael Otterman's book makes you think long and hard not only about human nature, but also about what the long haul of civilisation has brought us. The irony is that one of modern history's outstanding democracies is peeling back those achievements like the skin of an orange.

-- Warren Reed, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/4/07

Otterman writes as a patriot -- one who expects much of his country and is angry when it fails him.
-- Dennis Altman, The Age, 3/3/07

About this Title

Electric shocks.
Sleep deprivation.
Forced standing.
Water boarding.

George W. Bush calls them an 'alternative set of procedures', vital tools needed 'to protect the American people and our allies'. By any definition, these techniques are torture.

In American Torture Michael Otterman reveals how torture became standard practice in today's War on Terror and how it was refined, spread and kept legal. 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.

As the Cold War ended, these tortures were legalised using the very laws designed to eradicate their use. After 9/11, they were revived again for use on 'enemy combatants' detained in America's vast gulag of prisons across the globe, from secret CIA black sites in Thailand to the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

American Torture shows how the road to Abu Ghraib leads back through US military survival schools, Latin American military assistance programs, Vietnamese counter-terror operations and, finally, to the USSR and Communist China.

Torture violates more than international law and fundamental human rights-it radicalises enemies, undermines credibility and yields unreliable intelligence.

Above all, the practice does not make the world a safer place.

Visit the American Torture website at www.americantorture.com

About the Author

Michael Otterman is an award-winning freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker. He was a recent visiting scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University of Sydney. He has covered crime and culture for an array of publications, including Melbourne's Is Not magazine, the Sydney City Hub newspaper, and Boston's Weekly Dig. He lives in New York City. American Torture is his first book.