This book is a significant addition to a growing literature on torture that has been published in the last several years. David Forsythe himself notes that the book is based primarily on information that is readily available in the public domain (p. ix), and his attempt is to create a coherent narrative on the US policies of abuse toward enemy prisoners in the post-9/11 context committed in violation of US and international law.

A number of books have been written at different periods following the 9/11 attacks, yet they do not give a sense of the overall development of the incidents of abuse, the timeline, and the policies as they were conceptualized, changed, and retracted; Forsythe's book is especially useful in that context. Also, the range of materials he uses, from journalistic reporting to documents to academic research on torture, makes this narrative on the US policies of abuse even richer. Another useful aspect of this book is his annexes. Annex A and D are especially handy; there, the author gives an account of all the major actors who played a role in the policymaking and implementation process and provides a timeline of important events, mostly from the Bush administration. He defines “enemy prisoners” as the broadest possible category related to “those thought to represent violent danger to the security of the United States after 9/11” (p. x) and the term “abuse” as representing different levels of violence, ranging from “torture, CID [cruel, inhuman, or degrading (treatment)], and humiliating treatment and lesser abuse” (p. xi). Although it is sometimes difficult to maintain these distinctions in the actual events he narrates, it is important to recognize the range of abuse and the difficulties in actually distinguishing between them (see Jinee Lokaneeta, Transnational Torture: Law, Violence and State Power in the United States and India, 2011).

Forsythe divides the book into seven chapters. The first chapter lays out the different positions on torture and inhuman treatment that existed in the post 9/11 period, namely, “no torture or inhumane treatment, endorsement of torture or inhumane treatment, and trying to split the difference” (p. 26). The second does a recounting of the various officials who were responsible for the policies that led to the abuse of prisoners. The author asserts that regardless of whether one considers the officials—George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Dick Cheney—as neoconservatives or realists, they were clearly responsible for instituting the policies that led to severe abuse at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The third chapter focuses on the way in which the legal regime was put into place by the Bush lawyers to bypass international law in particular, in addition to some U.S. laws. Here, such familiar names as John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales (White House legal counsel), and John Ashcroft (attorney general) make an appearance, but others such as David Addington (Cheney's legal counsel) and William Haynes (Rumsfeld's legal counsel) are brought in as well. This chapter exemplifies the detailed way in which Forsythe connects the emergence of the incidents of abuse to the administration's policies and to the role of the lawyers in providing narrow interpretations of national and international laws.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the effect of these policies on the actual sites of conflict and how they resulted in abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo and in the kidnapping, secret transfer, and torture of prisoners by the CIA worldwide (popularly known as extraordinary rendition). Chapter 6 raises questions about due process rights during times of war, especially the debates on detention, classification, and military commissions, bringing in a discussion of the Supreme Court cases. It is in Chapter 7 that Forsythe lays out his own framework for analyzing the post-9/11 abuse of enemy prisoners.

As noted earlier, the author's overall contribution is in piecing together the story of abuse that was authorized, committed, but never really accounted for by the Bush or Obama administrations. Forsythe appears to be critical of the Bush administration's policies of abuse because they undermined the nation's credentials as a liberal democracy ostensibly based on the rule of law. He also discusses the potential benefits of transitional justice and truth commissions, but ultimately accepts the fact that powerful nations find ways to avoid being held accountable. He notes that President Barack Obama continued the trend of avoidance by emphasizing the need to “move forward” more than the need for accountability. At the same time, he seems more concerned with the “abuse” getting “out of control” than with the violation of the principle that abuse is never justified. He validates the Bush administration's narrative that, due to the requirements of national security, their intention was to pursue the middle course of action, namely, the path between “no torture” and “widespread torture” (p. 215), even though they were unsuccessful. According to Forsythe, the other experiment with the intermediate approach, namely, the Israeli experience, also failed because there was no attempt to ascertain whether the use of abuse was in truly exceptional situations or not. Yet he writes that “to the extent that multiple damaging attacks on a country, or the proven existence of multiple sleeper cells, practically push a government into considering exceptions to a total and absolute ban on major mistreatment of suspects, then one should profit from the failure of Israeli developments and emphasize the core need to address truly necessary exceptions” (p. 225).

The surprising thing is that despite the failure of the Bush administration to “manage” abuse, the failure of the Israeli government to ensure accountability, and the numerous instances of nationalistic rhetoric leading to abusive policies in U.S. history, Forsythe still believes in the possibility of coming up with truly necessary exceptions where the abuse could be rightfully used. Similar to Alan Dershowitz in his proposal for torture warrants to be issued by the judiciary, Forsythe reposes faith in the courts (civilian or military) to determine whether a “necessity defense” should be allowed that would help mitigate punishment in the case of true exceptions.

While the author attempts to ensure ultimate accountability by holding onto a ban against torture and inhuman treatment except in truly necessary situations, the problem with his argument is precisely the same as with those that advocate torture in the face of the ticking bomb scenario. Critics such as Elaine Scarry (“Five Errors in the Reasoning of Alan Dershowitz,” in Sanford Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection, 2004) and Henry Shue (“Torture in Dreamland: Disposing of the Ticking Bomb Scenario,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 37 [2/3]: 231–39) have pointed out that the perfect national security conditions or the equivalent ticking bomb scenario never really exist; they are inevitably exaggerated and expanded upon, something Forsythe himself notes. And once such a scenario is created, historically it has not been possible to control the escalation of torture. It is not that Bush and others were bad managers, but that the nature of torture is such that it is almost impossible to control the “excess.” Furthermore, as Shue notes, even to use torture in one instance requires a bureaucracy of torture to exist that can almost never be contained, leaving many questions about Forsythe's prescription unanswered for the reader.

Notwithstanding this critique, The Politics of Prisoner Abuse is an extremely well-articulated narrative of the different aspects of the torture debate that will undoubtedly be of use to scholars and teachers of American politics, international relations, and the ethics of violence.