“If some practices proceeded from the past, some others seem to point forward to some of the methods that would be used later in places like Abu Ghraib (p.283). Indeed, the 2015 preface makes reference to ‘talk of the “Salvador option” in Iraq’ during the Bush administration (p.xix). Bonner’s new epilogue notes simply in conclusion: ‘No American official has been held to account for the crimes committed by the American-backed governments in El Salvador, or for the deceit emanating from Washington’ (p.328). The evidence of this book provides a powerful argument that the claims made by the US, or other Western states for that matter, to be acting in good faith for good reasons anywhere else in the world, should be regarded with grave scepticism at all times.”

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