title: The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib
author:  Karen J. Greenberg 
description: *Starred Review* Bush administration officials and top military brass continue to maintain that the well-documented abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were the isolated actions of a few rogue guards. Not so, say the editors of this book. Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, and Dratel is a prominent defense attorney currently assisting in the defense of detainees at the Guantanamo base in Cuba. As their introductory essays make clear, they believe the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the claimed abuses at Guantanamo are the direct result of administration policies. They do not prove their case conclusively, but their compilation of administration documents is still riveting, chilling, and infuriating. They clearly reveal that, at the highest levels, the Bush administration sought legal justification to circumvent both the Geneva Convention and other international accepted norms regarding the interrogation and treatment of military detainees. We have top Justice Department officials claiming "non-state actors" are not protected by the Geneva Convention. We have Department of Defense officials approving "non-injurious physical contact," which, of course, opens the door to a wide variety of abusive and degrading practices. This vitally important book reminds us that the pursuit of intelligence by "unorthodox" means is a dangerous and slippery slope. <i>Jay Freeman</i><br /><i>Copyright  American Library Association. All rights reserved</i>
zlib_text: Hazel Carby
  A strange and bitter crop: the spectacle of torture
  opendemocracy.net/media-abu_ghraib/article_2149.jsp
  About the author
  Hazel Carby is professor of African American studies and of American studies at Yale University. Among her books
  are Reconstructing Womanhood (Oxford University Press, 1987), Race Men (Harvard University Press, 1998), and
  Cultures in Babylon (Verso, 1999).
  This article contains images that may be disturbing.
  The most severe impact of Abu Ghraib for the United States government has been the fact that the actions there of
  its military personnel and civilian contractors have been seen across the world. The dissemination of images by
  western and Arab media, including the internet, meant that the scandal, as well as being seen as a legal violation
  and moral outrage, was played and replayed in the hearts and minds of citizens in every country.
  For American citizens to understand and address this impact requires more serious self-reflection than their current
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