The Leonard Lopate Show

Rorschach and Awe

Vanity Fair writer Katherine Eban asked why psychologists were participating in military interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, and she uncovered the alarming story of two C.I.A. contractors who were, in secret, designing torture techniques. Learning how and why took her deep into a world that our military and intelligence agencies would rather keep hidden.

Read her article, "Rorschach and Awe."

Weigh in: Should torture ever be used during interrogations of suspected terrorists?

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No End in Sight

The Bush Administration's handling of the war in Iraq has been called into question right from the start. Filmmaker Charles Ferguson sought answers inside the White House, the Pentagon, and Baghdad’s Green Zone, interviewing retired Colonel Paul Hughes and other high-ranking officials to find out exactly how an initial military victory devolved into the chaos and violence we see today. The result is his Sundance Prize-winning documentary No End in Sight.

Learn more about the film here.

Weigh in: If we figure out what went wrong in Iraq, can we make it right?

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An Iraqi Rhapsody

When Sinan Antoon's debut novel, I'Jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, was published in Arabic in 2004, Lebanese poet and literary critic Abdo Wazin declared it one of the most important Arabic novels in recent memory. A fictional memoir of a young political prisoner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a haunting portrait of an artist's life in a totalitarian state.

I'Jaam is available for purchase at amazon.com.

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