08/14/12 – Alfred McCoy – The Scott Horton Show

History professor Alfred McCoy discusses how the Bush and Obama administrations have created a torture regime with "impunity at home, rendition abroad;" Bush's policy change after the Iraq Abu Ghraib embarrassment, when Iraqis and Afghans took over torture duty and American soldiers kept their mouths shut about it; the pathology of impunity that's endemic among high government officials; the torture debate between FBI agent Ali Soufan and Dick Cheney/CIA; and how universal jurisdiction could...

04/25/11 – Alfred McCoy – The Scott Horton Show

Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses his article on the US empire of failed states at TomDispatch; the post-WWII breakup of European empires into 100 new countries, shifting the balance of world power; how empires require cooperative foreign elites to keep the natives under control; the transition from imperial Britain’s dominant naval power to US air supremacy, which requires many more military bases (which are slipping away as the US loses its...