ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that the practice of torture by Coalition forces is intimately connected to the social and political construction of the overall war on terrorism after 11 September 2001. It examines some broad frameworks for explaining the torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere. The chapter describes the primary discursive processes implicated in the construction and reproduction of torture, and assesses the evidence linking the public political discourse of the war on terror to the formulation of the torture policy and its practice in Abu Ghraib. The language and practice of counter-insurgency, domestic prison management, and the treatment of immigrants in American political life provides concrete historical continuities with the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. The core public narratives of the war on terrorism declared after 11 September 2001 discursively construct a social and political reality in which such behaviour becomes not only possible, but highly predictable.