The Torture Question

How the post-9/11 "get-tough" policy of the U.S. government worked its way down to the cell blocks of Abu Ghraib

In the uncertain weeks following 9/11, an internal power struggle was underway deep inside the Bush administration. Waged between partisans at the highest levels of the government, that battle — captured in a series of blunt memos — exemplifies the struggle to create a legal framework to give the president authority to aggressively interrogate enemy fighters in the war on terror.