Joshua E. S. Phillips and Mark Danner will explore how soldiers and senior officials came to believe that torture was permissible, effective, and necessary.  Danner and Phillips will also discuss the impact of abuse and torture on detainees and soldiers.

Mark Danner has produced some of the most important essays and books about U.S. policies that led to detainee abuse and torture during the “war on terror.”  His most recent books are Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror and Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War. He is Chancellor’s Professor of Journalism and Politics at UC Berkeley.

Based on first-hand reports from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and years of interviewing ordinary soldiers, Joshua E.S. Phillips’s new book None of Us Were Like This Before explores how troops turned to torture and presents a shattering record of the impact of detainee abuse and torture on detainees and America’s veterans.