The Torture Debate in America

Book Overview

As a result of the work assembling the documents, memoranda, and reports that constitute the material in The Torture Papers the question of the rationale behind the Bush administration's decision to condone the use of coercive interrogation techniques in the interrogation of detainees suspected of terrorist connections was raised. The condoned use of torture in any society is questionable but its use by the United States, a liberal democracy that champions human rights and is a party to international conventions forbidding torture, has sparked an intense debate within America. The Torture Debate in America captures these arguments with essays from individuals in different discipines. This volume is divided into two sections with essays covering all sides of the argument from those who embrace absolute prohibition of torture to those who see it as a viable option in the war on terror and with documents complementing the essays.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521674611
• ISBN13: 9780521674614
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 436 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

critically important intellectual material

Few questions are more relevant to our times than that of the resurrection (as if it had ever actually died!) of judicial torture. No longer safely able to stand tall and insular on its humanistic pedestal, America must face this issue NOW. People think of screws and boots and wedges and coals, but such medievalism is no longer remotely relevant: far more reliable (not to mention quicker) results are obtainable from pharmaceuticals (perhaps--like the death penalty--another issue where the Hippocratic oath is [?] at odds with Dr. Smith's specific actions today). Read, absorb, consider, conjecture, believe.