1. This is not to justify what occurred [at My Lai]
This is not to justify what occurred [at My Lai]. Justifications are empty and outrageous. Rather, it's to say that I more or less understand what happened on that day in March 1968, how it happened, the wickedness that soaks into your blood and heats up and starts to sizzle. I know the boil that precedes butchery. At the same time, however, the men in Alpha Company did not commit murder. We did not turn our machine guns on civilians; we did not cross that conspicuous line between rage and homicide. I know what occurred here, yes, but I also feel betrayed by a nation that so widely shrugs off barbarity, by a military judicial system that treats murderers and common soldiers as one and the same. Apparently we're all innocent -- those who exercise moral restraint and those who do not, officers who control their troops and officers who do not. In a way, America has declared itself innocent.
Tim O’Brien, “The Vietnam in Me”

12. 1987: Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked to justify torture, including war, threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, terrorist acts, violent crime, or any form of armed conflict. Torture cannot be justified as a means to protect public safety or prevent emergencies. Neither can it be justified by orders from superior officers or public officials. The prohibition on torture applies to all territories under a party's effective jurisdiction, and protects all people under its effective control, regardless of citizenship or how that control is exercised
Signatories are required to investigate and prosecute allegations of torture.

13. Israeli Supreme Court (1999): "A democratic, freedom-loving society does not accept that investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering truth. The rules pertaining to investigators are important to a democratic state. They reflect its character."
John McCain: “The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies…. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength-that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.”

14. Water Boarding

15. Torturing Democracy
43:22
55:00

16. Minotaurs

17. UAE

18. Coups