Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, much of Latin America was under the control of brutal military juntas engaged in what they perceived as a life-and-death war against communists. The role of the United States' government in this has been well documented, but until now, France's contribution was more shadowy.
Death Squadrons: The French School convincingly reveals French veterans of the wars in Indochina (1946-1954) and Algeria (1954-1962) provided the inspiration, the training, and some of the intelligence that allowed Latin America's dictators to torture and kill thousands of their own citizens. Filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin traces the development of the theory of counter-revolutionary warfare, first tested Indochina and in Algiers (where 20,000 civilians died). Some of its foremost practitioners, like French General Paul Aussaresses, freely admit their contributions, even with a hint of pride. Others are surreptitiously captured on a hidden camera, admitting high-level political and military links between the dictators and the French government. Many of those interviewed are now either in custody or under indictment. Though little documentary footage of these practices exists, the Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo realistically recreated the French interrogation methods in The Battle of Algiers. (The Battle of Algiers was recently shown to American officers confronted with ongoing attacks on their personnel in Iraq, and excerpts from this film illustrate Death Squadrons). Death Squadrons also shows how, during the 1960's, the French were instrumental in training U.S. officers at Fort Bragg on counter-insurgency techniques that were later used by the U.S. military in Vietnam (1965-1975). Death Squadrons serves a cautionary note about what can happen when governments and the military are convinced that enemies are everywhere, and that any means necessary can be employed to fight them. It's an important lesson to bear in mind as the war on terror continues.

In Death Squadrons: The French School by Marie-Monique Robin

By forcing repeat combat assignments to Iraq and Afghanistan – and by winking at torture and indiscriminate killings – George W. Bush is degrading the reputation of the U.S. military, turning enlisted soldiers and intelligence officers into murderers and sadists.
For instance, on Feb. 10 at Camp Liberty in Iraq, Army Ranger Sgt. Evan Vela was sentenced by a U.S. military court to 10 years in prison for executing an unarmed Iraqi detainee who – along with his son – had stumbled into a U.S. sniper position last year. After letting the 17-year-old son go, Vela’s squad leader, Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley ordered Vela to use a 9-millimeter pistol to shoot the father, Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, in the head, an order that Vela carried out. “It was murder, plain and simple,” military prosecutor, Major Charles Kuhfahl, told the court. Janabi’s son, Mustafa, was allowed to make a statement, explaining how his father’s death had devastated the family and how one of his four younger brothers now avoids their home because he can’t stand the sight of his father’s empty room.
“Please don’t forget about us,” Mustafa told the court. But Vela’s guilty verdict was a rare case of holding a U.S. soldier accountable in the killing or abusing of an Iraqi. Among the infrequent cases that have been brought, most end in acquittals or convictions only on minor charges. Last November, for example, another military jury acquitted Hensley in the same murder of Janabi as well as in the killing of two other Iraqi men south of Baghdad in the early days of Bush’s troop “surge.” That jury ruled that Hensley was following the approved "rules of engagement," though it did convict him of planting an AK-47 on one victim. Some of Vela’s military comrades complained that it was unfair to single any of them out for punishment because these killings are so common in Iraq. Vela’s former platoon commander, Sgt. First Class Steven Kipling, said that if all U.S. combat soldiers in Iraq were subjected to the same scrutiny applied to Vela, “we would have thousands” of cases. [NYT, Feb. 11, 2008] Indeed, the evidence does suggest that the handful of homicide cases from Iraq and Afghanistan that reach military trial represent only a small fraction of the unprovoked killings of locals at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

In Bush Turns US Soldiers into Murderers by Robert Parry

In The Washington Monthly, 37 writers, including a former president, the speaker of the House, two former White House chiefs of staff, current and former senators, generals, admirals, intelligence officials, interrogators and religious leaders, demand a stop to the Bush administration's continuing use of torture.

In No Torture. No Exceptions. by The Washington Monthly

The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?. The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread.

See The Green Light by Philippe Sands

And the same men who are so strongly bound by custom, honour, habit, thankfulness, even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy inter pares and who, by contrast, demonstrate in relation to each other such resourceful consideration, self-control, refinement, loyalty, pride, and friendship— these men, once outside where the strange world, the foreign, begins, are not much better than beasts of prey turned loose. There they enjoy freedom from all social constraints. In the wilderness they make up for the tension which a long fenced-in confinement within the peace of the community brings about.

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Moral