Michael Otterman's powerful book, 
Michael Otterman is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, as well as award-winning journalist and filmmaker.
Exposes the secret history of US torture at home and abroad...
"Michael Otterman's powerful book... should be compulsory reading for everyone with concerns over human rights." Rod Barton, Former Director of Intelligence (Australia), Weapons Inspector and Advisor to the CIA (Iraq).
George W. Bush calls them an 'alternative set of procedures': forcing victims to stand for forty hours, depriving them of sleep for weeks on end, dousing naked prisoners with ice water in rooms chilled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and strapping them to inclined boards then flooding their mouths with water. These techniques are torture, and they are used by the United States of America.
Michael Otterman reveals the long history of US torture. He shows how these procedures became standard practice in today's war on terror. Initially, the US military and CIA based their techniques on the work of their enemies: the Nazis, Soviets and Chinese. Billions of dollars were spent studying, refining, then teaching these techniques to instructors at military survival schools and interrogators charged with keeping communism at bay. Along the way, the US government produced torture-training manuals that were used in Vietnam, Latin America and elsewhere. As the Cold War ended, these tortures -- engineered to leave deep psychological wounds but few physical scars -- were legalized using the very laws designed to eradicate their use. After 9/11, they were revived again for use on enemy combatants detained in America's vast gulag of prisons across the globe -- from secret CIA black sites in Thailand to the Pentagon's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Michael Otterman shows that these interrogation methods violate more than international law and fundamental human rights. They radicalize enemies, undermine credibility and yield unreliable intelligence. They do not make us more safe -- they make us less safe.
Press:
This Year's Best Books, Sydney Morning Herald (Jan 6, 2007)
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Next Edition, The Australian (Dec 30, 2006)
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A Feast in Store, The Age (Dec 30, 2006)
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Publisher Information:
American Torture © 2007
Melbourne University Publishing
Pluto Press
Distributed in North America by University of Michigan Press
Release Dates:
March 2007 in Australia/New Zealand
April 2007 in US/UK