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Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond
Jameel Jaffer
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Description for Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond
Hardback. When the American media published photographs of US soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration assured the world that the abuse was isolated and that the perpetrators would be held accountable. This work presents a detailed account of what took place in America's overseas detention centers. Num Pages: 456 pages, 454 pages of documents. BIC Classification: JPVH; JWKT; JWXR. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 254 x 178 x 34. Weight in Grams: 998.
When the American media published photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration assured the world that the abuse was isolated and that the perpetrators would be held accountable. Over the next three years, it refined its narrative at the margins, but by and large its public position remained the same. Yes, the administration acknowledged, some soldiers abused prisoners, but these soldiers were anomalous sadists who ignored clear orders. Abuse, the administration said, was aberrational-not systemic, not widespread, and certainly not a matter of policy. The government's own documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, tell a starkly different story. They show that the abuse of prisoners was not limited to Abu Ghraib but was pervasive in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. Even more disturbing, the documents reveal that senior officials endorsed the abuse of prisoners as a matter of policy-sometimes by tolerating it, sometimes by encouraging it, and sometimes by expressly authorizing it. Records from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating "stress positions," held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months. Files from Afghanistan and Iraq describe prisoners who had been beaten, kicked, and burned. Autopsy reports attribute the deaths of those in U.S. custody to strangulation, suffocation, and blunt-force injuries. Administration of Torture is the most detailed account thus far of what took place in America's overseas detention centers, including a narrative essay in which Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh draw the connection between the policies adopted by senior civilian and military officials and the torture and abuse that took place on the ground. The book also reproduces hundreds of government documents--including interrogation directives, FBI e-mails, autopsy reports, and investigative files--that constitute both an important historical record and a profound indictment of the Bush administration's policies with respect to the detention and treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad.
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2007
Publisher
Columbia University Press United States
Number of pages
456
Condition
New
Number of Pages
456
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780231140522
SKU
V9780231140522
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Jameel Jaffer
Jameel Jaffer directs the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project and has been a litigator for the ACLU since 2002. He was educated at Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School. Amrit Singh is a Staff Attorney at the Immigrants' Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union and has been a litigator for the ACLU since 2002. She was educated at Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School.
Reviews for Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond
In gathering these truly telling documents Jaffer and Singh have distilled the essence of an evil that has shamed America. Exposing it can only help remove a terrible national stain.
John W. Dean, Nixon White House counsel and author of Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches [An] extraordinarily important book
Naomi Wolf The Huffington Post An immensely useful resource.
David Cole New York Review of Books The definitive evidence of the Bush-Cheney war crimes.
Nat Hentoff The Village Voice
John W. Dean, Nixon White House counsel and author of Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches [An] extraordinarily important book
Naomi Wolf The Huffington Post An immensely useful resource.
David Cole New York Review of Books The definitive evidence of the Bush-Cheney war crimes.
Nat Hentoff The Village Voice