A new book compiles the memos and reports U.S. officials wrote to determine how detainees would be treated in facilities in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison -- and what interrogation techniques would be permissible.
The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib was edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel; it includes documents written by President Bush, Legal Counsel to the President Alberto Gonzales, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others.
Greenberg and Dratel write: "Ultimately, what the reader is left with after reading these documents is a clear sense of the systematic decision to alter the use of methods of coercion and torture that lay outside of accepted and legal norms."
Copyright 2023 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air.