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Taking exception: When torture becomes thinkable

Torture seems to have become a tool of state for the U.S. Why? If torture is not unplanned, what purpose does it serve?

It is usually assumed that prisoners are tortured to make them relinquish information. However, that is hardly an adequate explanation; military intelligence officers estimated to the Red Cross that 70 to 90 percent of the prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison were held by mistake. Torture is not simply for gathering information. There is a larger sense in which torture fits into the grand narrative of the “war on terror.”

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