Check out the Sunday Observer where Jason Burke charts a hidden network of prisons around the world where "more than 3,000 al-Qaeda suspects have been held without trial - and many subjected to torture - since 9/11"

Update: Also read "Feels Like the Third Time" in American Prospect about U.S. involvement in torture in Vietnam and Central America. [link via Hamster]

Stories of American involvement in torture abroad have surfaced periodically. In 1996 The Washington Post published a front-page article, headlined "U. S. Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture; Manuals Used 1982-91, Pentagon Reveals." Such stories had only limited impact, most likely for two reasons: They described techniques that Americans taught, rather than used, and they were not accompanied by photographs. And in the irony department, there's:

The National Security Archive also posted a 1992 report prepared for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney warning that the U.S. Army was using interrogation manuals containing "offensive and objectionable material" that "undermines U.S. credibility, and could result in significant embarrassment."