Is Torture Making a Comeback?

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Elizabeth Arsenault is a professor at Georgetown University out with the new book How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on Torture. The book examines how the Bush administration shattered a widely held consensus against using torture and what that means for the current debate about intelligence gathering, Guantanamo, so-called “black sites” and, crucially, executive power. 

These debates, which raged during the Bush administration, came roaring back just days into the Trump administration with word that a draft executive order covering many of these issues was circulating around the White House.  We kick off discussing that executive order before having a wider conversation about debates surrounding torture and also what to do with ISIS combatants captured on the battlefield.