GLOBAL DIALOGUE Volume 12 ● Number 1 ● Winter/Spring 2010—Working the Dark Side

Editor's Note

n 16 September 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney of the United States declared the approach he thought necessary to deal with the terrorism threat that a few days previously had delivered such a devastating blow against his country: “We’ll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will.” In retrospect, his words have been seen as the first public indication of how the administration of George W. Bush would fight its “war on terror”—by using “any means at our disposal” (Cheney again), among them, means widely regarded as torture.

The Bush administration’s seeking of legal legitimisations for the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, its approval of practices such as “waterboarding” and “rendition”, the publication of the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib jail, and the testimony of inmates from the...