The article provides the personal feelings about having been used as cogs in the Bush-constructed torture machine. The effect on their lives is well presented and often poignant.

This is a touching read, but it's hard to extrapolate much from the sample profiles about how Americans feel about torture, or even how these 'techniques' effect soldiers. The profiles should have been tied together better.

very good... reporter keeps to a neutral position ....Shows the ambiguous feeling/results of trying to dissect the career, before during and after Iraq prison deployment duty, of one military specialist.

Sharrock challenges us to reevaluate our priorities, our moral character, and our sense of justice. Her article forces us to live in a torturer’s shoes and experience the moment when an ordinary man decides whether to follow his superior’s orders or follow his own moral conscience. Of course, we have all made painful compromises between work and life. Allbright’s story shifts responsibility, however, away from the practitioners of torture towards American foreign policy in general, asking the US military to reconsider the types of situations it puts its soldiers in. While we all wish to claim immunity from the temptation to inflict pain on others, we will never know what we are capable of until faced with the choice between ... More »

Anyone should read this article. If only half the world would think as much about their own doings as Ben Allbright, we would not have to discuss this topic. Justine Sharrock wrote one of the best articles I ever read about this topic. His writing is touching and you can feel the enormous effort and endurance he put into the research in every word and every line.