Supreme Court & Civil Liberties
This 2004 case ruled that Guantánamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
What is Rasul v. Bush?
The CIA referred to waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions using this sanitized phrase.
What are Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs)?
This terrorist carried out the 9/11 attacks and is often analyzed using radicalization models.
Who is Mohamed Atta?
The country where the 2011 NSC drone strike simulation was set.
What is Pakistan?
This legal category determines whether detainees are prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
What is unlawful enemy combatant vs. POW status?
After 9/11, passengers were required to remove these at airport security checkpoints due to a 2001 failed bombing attempt.
What are Shoes?
This case addressed whether a U.S. citizen detained as an enemy combatant has due process rights.
What is Hamdi v. Rumsfeld?
This DOJ memo narrowly defined torture as pain equivalent to “organ failure or death.”
What is the Bybee Memo (or OLC torture memo)?
This theory argues individuals adopt extremist beliefs through group identity and in-group/out-group dynamics.
What is Social Identity Theory?
This U.S. citizen was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen, raising constitutional questions.
Who is Anwar al-Awlaki?
This principle prohibits returning someone to a country where they face torture.
What is non-refoulement?
This 2012 film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden sparked controversy for its portrayal of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.
What is "Zero Dark Thirty"?
This case challenged jurisdiction and sovereign immunity in a rendition case involving alleged torture.
What is El Masri v. United States?
This detainee was subjected to waterboarding 80+ times and remains at Guantánamo without trial.
Who is Abu Zubaydah?
This model suggests radicalization happens in progressive stages, often described as a staircase.
What is Moghaddam’s Staircase to Terrorism?
Critics argue drone strikes expand this branch of government’s power with limited oversight.
What is the Executive Branch?
Extraordinary rendition refers to transferring suspects to other countries primarily to do this.
What is interrogate / detain them outside U.S. legal protections?
In 2003, some U.S. restaurants renamed French fries to this in protest of France opposing the Iraq War.
What are Freedom Fries?
This constitutional principle protects against indefinite detention without legal justification.
What is habeas corpus?
Critics argue EITs violated this international treaty ratified by the United States in 1994.
What is the UN Convention Against Torture?
This factor is frequently debated: whether terrorists are mentally unstable or instead politically rational actors.
What is the “psychopath vs. strategic actor” debate?
This term refers to unintended civilian deaths during military operations.
What is collateral damage?
This body of law governs conduct during armed conflict.
What is International Humanitarian Law?
This 2003 aircraft carrier speech featuring a giant banner later became shorthand for premature victory declarations in Iraq.
What is the “Mission Accomplished” speech?
This tension defines many War on Terror cases: balancing national security against this foundational democratic value.
What is civil liberty / due process / constitutional rights?
The central debate about EITs often hinges on this question: Do they produce this outcome reliably?
What is actionable intelligence?
Many scholars argue terrorism is best understood not as senseless violence, but as this type of strategy.
What is political communication / coercive signaling?
Debates over drone strikes often center on whether they reduce terrorism or instead fuel this long-term effect.
What is radicalization / blowback?
One of the central legal debates post-9/11: whether the conflict with al-Qaeda qualifies as this type of war.
What is a non-international armed conflict?
This viral 2008 moment occurred when an Iraqi journalist threw this object at a U.S. president during a press conference in Baghdad.
What is a shoe?