Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective

Bufkinite@evpl — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:41:00 GMT

While I find it appalling on so many levels that we even need a such a book as this in the 21st Century US, I'm glad that I had the chance to read this. Torture is divided into two sections, the first being about international torture - it's history, putative usefulness, the exporting of torture from one country to another, the long-term effects of torture on its victims and perpetrators, and negotiating with torturers - and the second being about torture in the United States - including essays on practices banned by the State Department (but nevertheless recently authorized by the Department of Defense), command responsibility for torture, and torture in US prisons.

A particularly moving chapter, for me, was the one on the need to respect the Geneva Conventions (dismissed by former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as "quaint") written by Senator John McCain, himself a victim of torture during the Vietnam War.

While not easy to read, the book clearly answers both rhetorical questions in the title with a resounding "NO!" and provides factual information and ammunition to those wanting to reclaim for the United States the moral high ground in the treatment of dissidents, prisoners of war, and other "enemies of the state."

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Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective