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Strange, Savage Blood: Defeat and Torture in the War on Terror

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Examining Torture

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Abstract

On January 26, 1998, a newly founded organization, the Project for a New American Century (the Project), wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to make the removal of the Baa’th regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq a national security priority. The letter spoke in no uncertain terms about its distrust of the United Nations inspection regime imposed on Iraq after the Second Gulf War and emphasized the threat Saddam’s government would pose to US interests in the Middle East if the regime obtained “weapons of mass destruction.” Only the removal of Saddam as Iraq’s ruler, by unilateral military action if necessary, could insure that this danger could be averted (Project for a New American Century, 2013). Among the signatories were the future Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and a host of other prominent “neo-conservative” former officials and specialists in foreign affairs. 1

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Authors
  1. Tracy Lightcap
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. LaGrange College, USA

    Tracy Lightcap (professor of political science and chair of political science) (professor of political science and chair of political science)

  2. School of Public Policy, George Mason University, USA

    James P. Pfiffner (university professor and director of the Doctoral Program) (university professor and director of the Doctoral Program)

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© 2014 Tracy Lightcap and James P. Pfiffner

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Lightcap, T. (2014). Strange, Savage Blood: Defeat and Torture in the War on Terror. In: Lightcap, T., Pfiffner, J.P. (eds) Examining Torture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137439161_4

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