Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values | 
| Author: Philippe Sands
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: Book
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Sales Rank: 1261
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0230603904
Dewey Decimal Number: 341.48
EAN: 9780230603905
ASIN: 0230603904
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
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Product Description
On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law. The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal: How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented How Fox TV’s 24 contributed to torture planning How interrogation techniques were approved for use How the new techniques were used on Mohammed Al Qahtani, alleged to be “the 20th highjacker” How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges
Book Description
On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law. The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal: How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented How Fox TV’s 24 contributed to torture planning How interrogation techniques were approved for use How the new techniques were used on Mohammed Al Qahtani, alleged to be “the 20th highjacker” How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
A reminder of the banality of evil August 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Torture Team, Philippe Sands, professor at University College London and a respected international lawyer, carefully examines how Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and a team of compliant lawyers consciously set aside international rules constraining interrogations and thereby both destroyed the historic American commitment to the rule of law and opened themselves up for possible war crimes trials. "That decision," writes Sands, "was motivated by a combination of factors, including fear and ideology and an almost visceral disdain for international obligations." The book is carefully researched, meticulously documented, and always respectful. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the rule of law, and perhaps more ominously, for anyone concerned with what Hannah Arendt labeled, "the banality of evil."
Most of the book is bracketed by actions taken in 2002 and 2006. It was in February of that first year when George Bush declared that the Geneva Conventions did not protect detainees in Guantanamo. And it was on December 2 of the same year that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed a document, drafted by his General Counsel, Jim Haynes, which authorized eighteen aggressive interrogation techniques that might be used in questioning terror suspects.
Then, in June of 2006 the Supreme Court ruled, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of those captured in the "War on Terror." In his concurring opinion Justice Kennedy wrote that, "By Act of Congress... violations of Common Article 3 are considered `war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel."
Both of the actions taken in 2002, Sand observes, went against international law and long-standing U.S. military practice. Then, in the chapters that follow, he carefully builds his argument showing how both actions were rationalized and "legalized" by lawyers willing to forgo their obligations to please their clients. Through extensive interviews with most of those responsible for the legal advice, and many of those responsible for its implementation, Sands leaves the reader convinced that some legal action must be taken against those responsible if the United States is to undo the damage done to its reputation as a supporter of human rights and to the integrity of international law. Difficult as it might be to imagine, that would mean, in a just world, that Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and Jim Haynes would face an international tribunal.
Much of the book is woven around the released interrogation log of detainee 063 (Mohammed al-Qahtani). In a fitting postscript, after years in Guantanamo, after being accused of being the "20th highjacker," after months of being subjected to what must be called torturous interrogation, all charges against detainee 063 were dismissed "without prejudice."
The trail of torture August 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Along with documents made available dating back to 2002 - the Yoo/Bybee "torture memo", the Jim Haynes memo originating in Guantanamo and approved by Rumsfeld, and the interrogation logs of prisoner 063, al Qahtani - the author conducts a series of interviews that help us point to where the authority for "enhanced interrogation techniques" came from. It's now fairly clear that the impetus of the abuse that was applied to al-Qahtani at Guantanamo or that was depicted graphically at Abu Graib did not originate with a "few bad apples" in the lower ranks but came from up high; and that those at the lower ranks such as Diane Beaver were in some sense used as scapegoats.
The author uses a measured approach throughout the book, carefully interviewing many of the players involved, careful not to jump to conclusions but alert to missing links. As an English barrister and expert in international law, he brings knowledge of the dealings of the British government with the IRA, the arrest of Pinochet, and the British government's experiences in Iraq. He is someone who does not want to see undone the past efforts of the American government to reign in the use of torture around the world.
The treatment of al-Qahtani involved a systematic attempt to break a human personality down to something below an animal. All the eighteen interrogation techniques approved by Rumsfeld fell within the Yoo/Bybee legal guidelines of not being torture (Rumsfeld even mocked one of them as being a lot less than something he did every day), but taken together over an extended period of some fifty days - solitary confinement, lack of sleep, sensory overload, dehydration, extreme temperatures, humiliation, etc - they had a combined effect that can only be seen as torture - at least torture of the human soul, if not strictly speaking the body. The body was constantly monitored by physicians. And was all this necessary? The author makes clear that the "ticking time bomb scenario" was not in play here because 9/11 was already a year old. Was anything gained? Nothing that anyone knows, and soon before this book was published al-Qahtani was released without a trial.
A signal moment in the chain of events occurred on February 7, 2002 when George W. Bush announced that the U.S was not going to abide by the Geneva Conventions. In August of 2002 the OLC of the Justice Department produced the "torture memo". The basis for the forthcoming interrogation methods was set. The author interviews up the chain of command as far as Rumsfeld's legal counsel Jim Haynes in an attempt to see how they were originated and then used on al-Qahtani. The military side of the Pentagon was at least sceptical if not outright opposed to the aggressive approach the civilians - Feith and Haynes especially - were espousing. But Haynes, in his position of legal authority at the Pentagon, managed to lock the military out the process. The question beyond the scope of this book and hidden behind the wall of national security is how he was influenced by the top of the government.
A carefully researched and argued work July 27, 2008
As befits a QC, Mr. Sands runs a careful, well-researched, well-buttressed, step-by-step argument that political appointees in top legal positions deliberately ignored their ethical obligations, established government processes, international laws of war and peace as well as domestic law in order to craft policies and actions that the US, in the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials, unequivocally established as being war crimes.
His references to Nazi Germany require more elaboration (though this is clearly outside the scope of his book). Legal academia in Germany, beginning around the turn of the 19th/20th Century, created an academic climate and constitutional argument that denied the existence of substantive rights (i.e. human rights) or rights emanating from supranational law. It is this climate that enabled lawyers like Altstoetter to think as pure legal technocrats: So long as a law or policy had been enacted in a formally correct manner, they applied it, regardless of the horrendous consequences. It is extremely distressing to see these exact arguments repeated in the dissenting Supreme Court opinions of Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas in Hamdan, Hamdi and Boumediene.
Psychopaths run this country. July 26, 2008
This book left me so riled I didn't know what to do. I felt anger that was exacerbated by a feeling of helplessness. But this book is precisely what this country needs. We have to get educated about the horrors this country's leaders have visited upon the world.
Button pushing wedge issues need to be discarded for our own sanity.
Some researchers say that 6% of the general population are psychopaths, though most are sub-clinical. How this gang of virulent psychopaths gained office was through a deliberate plan of misdirection, fraud, and a simplistic black or white world view. To say nothing about hubris, greed, and a lack of conscience. If we remain ignorant or passive regarding this criminal behavior it will only continue to spread.
Please read this book and pass it on. Consider also Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side".
THE DEFINITIVE TEXT June 30, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Philippe Sands, a respected barrister and Queen's Counsel in the Matrix Chambers in England, as well as a Professor of International Law at University College London, writes a comprehensive and well-researched book that permits the reader to understand the process whereby torture became an accepted part of the fabric of the Global War on Terror. By interviewing many of the major players, and having access to many of the principal documents and memoranda, Philippe Sands takes us on a ride through the labyrinth of the Department of Defense that led to the harsh and brutal treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. The research is factual and surprisingly forceful, and the ability to get many of the architects to open up and give their views makes the book both informative and eminently readable. And yet, despite a walk down a difficult road that leaves the reader with no doubts as to the current Administration's views of the benefits of torture, the author manages to keep the book dispassionate and focused..and the author finds heroes in the Armed Forces who stand out for their courage and commitment to legality. One senses that this book will become required reading for those lawyers who will specialize in human rights whether in the United States of America or in the Europe. Research such as this will form the fabric on which future historians will judge current events and make legal judgments. It should be required reading for all those interested in the study of human rights and its application today.
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