Otterman writes as a patriot - one who expects much of his country and is angry when it fails him.

provide a venue for discussions about America's use of torture and feature updates about the fate of the over 10,000 'enemy combatants' and 'security detainees' held across the globe in secret CIA prisons and in places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

• Michael Otterman, Richard Hil, Paul Wilson, Dahr Jamail (2010) , Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs Of Carnage, ISBN 9780745328973

As with most things in life, knowing the problem isn't enough. We also have to understand its origins. That's what this book does well. Its strength is its methodical presentation of facts, many of them little known, to build a fresh and informative analysis of the psycho- logy behind President George W. Bush's claim that the United States's torture techniques are an "alternate set of procedures", vital tools needed "to protect the American people and our allies". Michael Otterman, an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, begins his history of torture with the early years of the Cold War when it was believed that communist governments had learned how to control the mind and turn people into human robots. In 1951, when an American journalist was arrested in Czechoslovakia, he very quickly "confessed" to hostile activities and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Otterman begins his book with the Cold War, and the ways in which it led to new forms of interrogation and surveillance. American support for successive South Vietnamese governments, another misadventure backed enthusiastically by Australian conservatives, frequently saw "brutal interrogation". Belief in the sheer evil of its Communist opponents justified appalling behaviour by the United States and its allies, just as it does today. Torture is defined as "the infliction of intense pain to body or mind to extract a confession or information, or for sadistic pleasure". This definition comes from a 1992 US army field manual, and closely adheres to the norms of international law.