The Torturer in the Mirror
When is torture ever an effective tool of government? Despite Obama promises to end torture (and close Guantanamo), this ineffective, inhumane and unacceptable practice still continues with complicity from the highest levels of the US government.
Before the US invasion of Iraq, before the American public saw the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib, the CIA went to the White House with a question: What, according to the Constitution, was the line separating interrogation from torture—and could that line be moved? The White House lawyers' answer—in the form of legal documents later known as the "Torture Memos"—became the US's justification for engaging in torture.
The Torturer in the Mirror shows us how when one of us tortures, we are all implicated in the crime. In three uncompromising essays, Iraqi dissident Haifa Zangana, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and professor of sociology Thomas Ehrlich Reifer teach us how physically and psychologically insidious torture is, how deep a mark it leaves on both its victims and its practitioners, and how necessary it is for us as a society to hold torturers accountable.
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Authors: Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General under Johnson; Haifa Zangana, Iraqi dissident; and Tom Erhlich Reifer, Associate Professor of Sociology and TNI Fellow.
Listen to a radio interview with Tom Reifer and Ramsey Clark, on Radio Without Borders' show Here on Earth.
About the authors
Tom Reifer
Tom Reifer is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego and publishes widely on global peace and social justice issues. He has also been a long-time activist in the anti-nuclear movement as well as a rank and file trade union activist. His specialty is the study of large-scale, long-term social change and world-systems analysis.
He is currently working on a book "Lawyers, Guns & Money: Wall Street & the American Century"
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