The legacy of torture in the “War on Terror,” told through the story of one tank battalion

Sergeant Adam Gray made it home from a year’s tour in Iraq only to die in his barracks. For more than three years, reporter Joshua Phillips—with the support of Adam’s mother and the cooperation 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 degradations of abuse. The location is far from CIA prisons and Guantánamo, but the story captures the widespread use and nature of torture in the US armed forces.

Based on firsthand reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, 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.

Praise for None of Us Were Like This Before

“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’.” — Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America

Joshua E. S. Phillips is based in New York City and has reported from Asia and the Middle East. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among other publications. His radio features have been broadcast on NPR and the BBC. In 2009, Phillips received the Newspaper Guild’s Heywood Broun Award of Substantial Distinction for his American Radio Works documentary What Killed Sergeant Gray.