An examination of the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Base from injuries inflicted by U.S. soldiers. Incorporating rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, and interviews with former government officials such as John Yoo, Alberto Mora and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, interrogators, prison guards, New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall (who blew the lid off the abuse taking place in Afghanistan) and the families of tortured prisoners, the film dissects the progression of the Administration's policy on torture from the secret role of key administration figures, such as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and others to the soldiers in the field. In the face of thousands of prisoners passing through the system, an astonishing number of admitted homicides, and a hastily drafted law that grants immunity to government officials for crimes against humanity while denying the fundamental right of habeas corpus to others, the film forces us to ask why, in the face of so much evidence of the ineffectiveness of cruelty as a means of obtaining information, we sought to insist on its use.