Sunday, 02 September 2012 10:01

Written by Dominic Alexander

None of Us Were Like This Before, a definitive investigation of the use of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq, has now been published in paperback

Video interview with Josh Phillips by TruthOut

Terror inflicted by drones may have lately overshadowed terror through the torture and abuse of prisoners in the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, but in both cases the norms of international law were and are being cast aside with chilling disdain. The torture of prisoners by US (and UK) soldiers was dismissed, predictably, as the product of a few bad apples, but Joshua E. S. Phillips, in None of Us Were Like This Before, documents the systematic nature of the abuse, and is now available in paperback. Reviewed on Counterfire when it came out in hardback, the book shows carefully and unsparingly both the impact on the tortured and the toll it has taken on US troops themselves. None of Us Were Like This Before deserves to be read widely

Read extracts from None of Us Were Like This Before published on Counterfire

Joshua E.S. Phillips, None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture (paperback, Verso 2012), ix, 238pp.