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ashrafulla's review against another edition
5.0
This is required reading. The author's tale of torture is a facet of the War on Terror that everyone must at least know. Whether you agree with the war or not you have to know what actions are consequences of your position. For hawks that means reading this book.
The detail of the struggles that Errachidi goes through at Bagram, Kandahar & Guantanamo Bay is so vivid you end up forcing yourself to put it down to ensure you don't get as wound up as he is. You will initially get very angry with the treatment of these prisoners. Just remember that if they weren't innocent, would you be this angry? That's a point often made by hawks that doves do not respect.
The struggles he went through also weave will with the times that he tries to find hope and the times he tries to scheme to make life better for those who share his struggle. As a result you are seeing the torture of humans, not just the list of grievances of prisoners. That's where I choked up the most, when he describes his empathy for the hunger strikers or how he tells stories of great feasts to his cellmates.
There is probably a dual book to this, one that describes how torture helped get bin Laden. But for now this book has planted me firmly on one side of the interrogation debate.
The detail of the struggles that Errachidi goes through at Bagram, Kandahar & Guantanamo Bay is so vivid you end up forcing yourself to put it down to ensure you don't get as wound up as he is. You will initially get very angry with the treatment of these prisoners. Just remember that if they weren't innocent, would you be this angry? That's a point often made by hawks that doves do not respect.
The struggles he went through also weave will with the times that he tries to find hope and the times he tries to scheme to make life better for those who share his struggle. As a result you are seeing the torture of humans, not just the list of grievances of prisoners. That's where I choked up the most, when he describes his empathy for the hunger strikers or how he tells stories of great feasts to his cellmates.
There is probably a dual book to this, one that describes how torture helped get bin Laden. But for now this book has planted me firmly on one side of the interrogation debate.
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