The Torturer in the Mirror

"Look in the mirror: Do you see a torturer there?"--Former attorney general Ramsey Clark
The torturer used to be the other. He was a man whose job it was to impose pain and extract information. Today we think of torture in a different way. Today, anyone, man or woman, who joins the army or write [...]
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"Look in the mirror: Do you see a torturer there?"--Former attorney general Ramsey Clark
The torturer used to be the other. He was a man whose job it was to impose pain and extract information. Today we think of torture in a different way. Today, anyone, man or woman, who joins the army or writes a law that legitimizes torture can be a torturer. Today, anyone who looks in the mirror could be a torturer.
"The Torturer in the Mirror" shows us how when one of us tortures, we are all implicated in the crime. These three sharp essays by former attorney general Ramsey Clark, Iraqi dissident Haifa Zangana, and professor of sociology Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, expose how psychologically insidious torture practices are, how deep a mark they leave, and how necessary it is for us as a society to hold torturers accountable.
Ramsey Clark was the US attorney general during the Johnson administration and is founder of the International Action Center.
Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi political commentator and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Thomas Ehrlich Reifer is an associate professor of sociology at the University of San Diego and an associate fellow of the Transnational Institute.