Torture and Impunity : The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation

Alfred W McCoy

ISBN 10: 0299288544 / ISBN 13: 9780299288549

Published by University Of Wisconsin Press Aug 2012, 2012

About this Item

Neuware - Campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama offered an impassioned denunciation of the 'enhanced' interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration in its War on Terror - methods that included sensory deprivation, self-inflicted pain, and waterboarding. But four years later America has yet to prosecute or punish these abuses. Tracing the origins of this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U. S. government under presidents Bush and Obama. During the early years of the Cold War, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject's resistance to interrogation. For many of those subjected to these experiments, the result was an experience akin to psychosis. Leaving its most lasting scars on the psyche rather than the body, such torture lent itself to propagation, and for three decades the U.S. shared these methods with its anti-Communist allies around the globe. After the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001, the CIA opened its own prisons, and American agents began, for the first time, to dirty their hands with waterboarding and wall slamming. Simultaneously, mass media offered enticing, often eroticized simulations of torture in film, television, and computer games that normalized this illegal practice for millions of Americans. In the absence of legal sanction for the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, media exposés and congressional hearings have proved insufficient deterrents. The American public, preoccupied with the nation's failing economy, has seemingly moved on. But the images of abuse from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America's moral authority as a world leader.

Seller Inventory # 9780299288549

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Torture and Impunity : The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
• Publisher: University Of Wisconsin Press Aug 2012
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299288544
• ISBN 13: 9780299288549
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 228W x 149H x 25D millimeters 228 millimeters width by 149 millimeters height by 25 millimeters depth
• Weight: 565 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His many books include Policing America's Empire and A Question of Torture.