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.
General
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