None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture
Sergeant Adam Gray made it home from Iraq only to die in his barracks. For more than three years, reporter Joshua E. S. Phillips—with the support of Adam’s mother and several of his Army buddies—investigated Adam’s death. What Phillips uncovered was a story of American veterans psychologically scarred by the abuse they had meted out to Iraqi prisoners.
How did US forces turn to torture? Phillips’s narrative recounts the journey of a tank battalion—trained for conventional combat—as its focus switches to guerrilla war and prisoner detention. It tells of how a group of ordinary soldiers, ill trained for the responsibilities foisted upon them, descended into the degradation of abuse. The location is far from CIA prisons and Guantanamo, but the story captures the widespread use and nature of torture in the US armed forces.
Based on firsthand reporting from the Middle East, as well as interviews with soldiers, their families and friends, military officials, and the victims of torture, None of Us Were Like This Before reveals how soldiers, senior officials, and the US public came to believe that torture was both effective and necessary. The book illustrates that the damaging legacy of torture is not only borne by the detainees, but also by American soldiers and the country to which they’ve returned.
Hardback, 256 pages
ISBN: 9781844675999
June 2010
$26.95 / £16.99
Reviews
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Basing his work on extensive interviews, [Phillips] details how ordinary American troops participated in the torture of enemy soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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A masterwork of narrative nonfiction.
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Phillips shows that the recourse to blaming a ‘few bad apples’ should be recognised as a disgraceful, face-saving fiction.
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A tour de force of investigative journalism.
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This shattering book is a journey into the heart of American darkness. What Joshua Phillips makes shockingly clear is that the misbehavior of some of our best soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan came about because of a failure of military leadership and because political leaders lacked the courage to admit the word ‘torture’.
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Those who authorized torture and defend it don’t want to talk about this. They took honorable, patriotic young soldiers and convinced them to sacrifice the very principles that they had signed up to defend. That paradox is what Phillips investigates and brings to light. And he does it with the utmost respect for the soldiers.
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Phillips’ book remains the first and best heartbreaking tale not only of the abuses taking place within our military prisons, but also the negative, long term and in many cases fatal psychological affects it is having on both interrogating soldiers and interrogated enemy prisoners of war ... [An] outstanding book [and] a necessary read for all.
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None of Us Were Like This Before is a model of conscientious reporting on a volatile subject—the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. His ethical and compassionate approach is an act of citizenship.
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There are many things in this book that are fascinating and generally unknown. One is that these soldiers were afraid to report what they had seen and done … but without reporting it they couldn’t receive any medical help for their trauma.
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None of Us Were Like This Before is a serious, comprehensive effort to examine how torture and abuse, once embarked upon, damage the torturer and abuser as well as the tortured and abused.
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This is an important book showing the damage abuse does to the torturers as well as to their victims.
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The causes and consequences of systematic abuse and torture are all explored by Joshua Phillips through a careful but searing narrative.
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A fascinating yet distressing account of how the use of torture and abusive techniques on prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan affected the lives of American soldiers who found themselves caught up in it. Far from neglecting the suffering of the victims, Phillips, through meticulous research, also brings home the full horror of the war crimes inflicted upon the citizens of the occupied nations.
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Joshua Phillips’ book shows that America’s leaders were wrong.
Blog
Talks on Torture by Joshua E.S. Phillips
Tune into the Firedoglake Book Salon on Saturday, February 18 at 2pm PST (5pm EST) to join author Joshua E.S. Phillips in an online discussion of his book None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture. In real time, participants, led by TruthOut's Jason Leopold, will weigh in on Phillips' incisive account of how ordinary soldiers in a US tank battalion, ill trained for the responsibilities foisted upon them, descended into the degradation of abuse.
Joshua E.S. Phillips on uncovering the failures of the Detainee Abuse Task Force
Though the horrific images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib have been burned into the American cultural consciousness, what modes of redress are actually available to victims of US military torture? In an interview with Erika Eichelberger of the Nation Institute, Joshua E.S. Phillips discusses the grim shortcomings of the Detainee Abuse Task Force that he uncovered while researching his incisive investigation of American soldiers and torture, None of Us Were Like This Before. The DATF, Phillips explains, too often fails to properly investigate and resolve reports of torture:
Joshua Phillips on air for None of Us Were Like This Before
Following a recent PBS "Need to Know" feature, and an extended article for the Nation, "Inside the Detainee Abuse Task Force," Joshua Phillips, author of None of Us Were Like This Before, has done a series of radio interviews about the book. The interviews include one with Chuck Mertz for WNUR's "This is Hell" and another with Scott Horton for AntiWar Radio.
Upcoming Events
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March 10, 2012
Irondale Center
Another Life with Joshua E.S. Phillips
Joshua Phillips and Zeke Johnson from Amnesty International discuss the effects of participating in torture on US soldiers