Is Torture Making a Comeback?

Will Trump bring back torture as US policy? He promised it on the campaign trail.  And just days into office, word leaked that a draft executive order covering many of these issues was circulating around the White House.

In the early 2000s, the Bush administration shattered a widely held consensus against the use of torture against combatants captured on the battlefield and beyond. The new book How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on Torture by Georgetown University professor Elizabeth Arsenault examines how torture became official US policy for a time–and what that means for the current debate about intelligence gathering, Guantanamo, so-called “Black Sites,” and the limits of executive power.

These questions, which raged during the Bush administration, are suddenly relevant again.

In this episode Arsenault discusses how the legacy of the Bush administration’s approach to torture may haunt the current administration. If you have 20 minutes and want to learn some of the key policy, political and legal questions facing the Trump administration as they decide what to do with combatants captured on the battlefield, have a listen.

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