Red, White, Blue & Orange

The normalization of torture in American media, exemplified by films like *Zero Dark Thirty*, obscures the reality that such methods are both ineffective and morally corrosive. Interrogators often rely on the false biological assumption that every detainee will eventually break under duress, despite evidence that pain impairs memory and intelligence gathering. The case of Muhibullah Umarov, a Tajikistani man wrongfully detained at Guantanamo Bay for years without charge, illustrates the human cost of this flawed system. Swept up in the post-9/11 dragnet, Umarov’s experience reveals that many detainees were not hardened terrorists but individuals caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the lack of evidence against him, the systemic inertia of the war on terror kept him imprisoned, highlighting a persistent failure to reconcile national security policies with human rights and basic justice.