# George W. Bush: The War On Terror

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/george-w-bush-the-war-on-terror
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/george-w-bush-the-war-on-terror.md
Podcast: [Disturbing History](https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005)
Published: 2026-06-05T04:00:03+00:00
Episode link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/george-w-bush-the-war-on-terror--72332158
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72332158/dhbushfinal.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/disturbing-history-7341005/episodes/george-w-bush-the-war-on-terror
Duration seconds: 4476

## Resource

In this episode of the Disturbing History presidential series, we cross out of settled history and into living memory to examine the presidency of George W. Bush through the architecture of the War on Terror. Beginning with the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the fear that reshaped American government overnight, we trace how that fear was translated into law, policy, and ultimately a global apparatus of detention, interrogation, surveillance, and war. We walk through the legal scaffolding built inside the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, where attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee drafted the August 1, 2002 "torture memos" that redefined torture so narrowly that only pain equivalent to organ failure or death would qualify, and that advanced the unitary executive theory placing the president's wartime authority beyond the reach of Congress and the courts. We examine the opening of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp on January 11, 2002, deliberately sited beyond the expected reach of American courts, and the roughly 780 men held there, the overwhelming majority eventually released without charge.We follow the CIA's enhanced interrogation program from its first subject, Abu Zubaydah, through the network of secret black sites in Thailand, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Afghanistan, including the death of Gul Rahman from hypothermia at the site known as COBALT or the Salt Pit in November 2002. We cover the extraordinary rendition of innocent men, among them Canadian engineer Maher Arar, German citizen Khaled el-Masri, and the Milan cleric Abu Omar, whose abduction led to the in-absentia conviction of more than twenty CIA operatives in Italian courts. The episode then turns to the case for the Iraq War: the aluminum tubes claim disputed by the Department of Energy…

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## Transcript

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