American Torture
From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond

Exposes the secret history of US torture at home and abroad.

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 Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. American Torture shows that the road to Abu Ghraib leads back through US military survival schools, Latin American military assistance programs, Vietnamese counter-terror operations and, finally, to America's Cold War enemies: the USSR and communist China. It traces how the practice was refined, spread and kept legal. Such methods violate more than international law and fundamental human rights. As Michael Otterman reveals, they radicalise enemies, undermine credibility and yield unreliable intelligence. Above all, they do not make us more safe.

List of Acronyms
In Their Own Words
1 A Climate of Fear
2 Stress Inoculation
3 Codifying Cruelty
4 The Phoenix Factor
5 In America's Backyard
6 The Human Cost
7 Alive and Legal
8 The Gloves Come Off, Part I
9 Guantanamo
10 The Gloves Come Off, Part II
The Dual State
Appendix I: Human Resource Exploitation
Training Manual - 1983
Notes
Bibliography
Index.