Torture and Democracy is a much-needed attempt to put our discussions on a firmer historical and conceptual footing while showing us the realities of what torture is and what it does. Based on a decade of research and approximately 2,000 sources in 14 languages, Torture and Democracy is really several books in one. It is a methodical history of what Rejali calls 'clean' or 'stealth' torture (torture that leaves no marks) in the 20th century; a sociological examination of torture's relationship to democracies; a psychological exploration of torture's impact on societies and individuals; a practical consideration of torture's effectiveness; a philosophical musing on the ethics of torture and interrogation in general; an exhaustive cataloguing of tortures used throughout the ages; and what Rejali calls 'a reliable sourcebook' for those who speak out against torture anywhere.

This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali. one of the world's leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib. from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East. and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe.

As Reiali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions.As the twentieth century progressed, he argues,democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more. and more indiscriminately,but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture:methods that leave no marks. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists.low-level authorities in the world's oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal.Long before the CIA even existed, police and soldiers turned instead to "clean" techniques,such as torture by electricity, ice, water, noise.drugs, and stress positions. As democracy and human rights spread after World War II, so too did these methods.

Rejali makes this troubling ease in fluid, arresting prose and on the basis of unprecedented research-conducted in multiple languages and on several continents-begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib. The author of a major study of Iranian torture, Rejali also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering the new apologists for torture point by point. A brave and disturbing book, this is the benchmark against which all future studies of modem torture will be measured.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Historical Claims

Puzzles and Cautions

The Priority of Public Monitoring

Variations among States

Variations within States

National Styles of Stealth Torture

Torture and Democracy

Does Torture Work?

Who Cares?

Ⅰ Torture and Democracy

1 Modern Torture and Its Observers

  Defining Torture

  Monitoring Torture

2 Torture and Democracy

Ⅱ Remembering Stalinism and Nazism Introduction

3 Lights,Heat,and Sweat

4 Whips and Water

5 Bathtubs

Ⅲ A History of Electric Stealth

6 Shock

7 Magnetos

8 Currents

9 Singing the World Electric

10 Prods,Tasers,and Stun Guns

11 Stun City

Ⅳ Other Stealth Traditions

12 Sticks and Bones

13 Water,Sleep,and Spice

14 Stress and Duress

15 Forced Standing and Other Postions

16 Fists and Exercises

17 Old and New Restraints

18 Noise

19 Drugs and Doctors

Ⅴ Politics and Memory

2o Supply and Demand for Clean Torture

21 Does Torture Work?

22 What the Apologists Say

23 Why Governments Don't Learn

24 The Great Age of Torture in Modern Memory

Appendixes

 A A List of Clean Tortures

 B Issues of Method

 C Organization and Explanations

 D A Note on Sources for American Torture during the Vietnam War

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index