War Against Terrorism

War Against Terrorism is the name Mohamedou Ould Slahi gives to the campaign through which the United States justified action against suspected terrorists after the September 11 attacks. In his account, the phrase is not a neutral backdrop: it links congressional authorization and public claims of danger to secret detention, interrogation, and the treatment of people whose alleged roles could change as investigations proceeded. The narrative sets that broad political language against the particulars of his own case and the uncertainty surrounding the evidence for it.

The phrase and its political setting

Slahi situates the campaign in the immediate aftermath of September 11. On September 18, 2001, Congress authorized the president to use force against those responsible for, assisting, or sheltering the attackers. He then describes the United States government as beginning a secret operation aimed at capturing, detaining, interrogating, or killing terrorism suspects, and argues that this operation had no legal basis. That is his stated judgment, not a neutral finding supplied by the narrative.

The phrase also works as a moral frame. Slahi says that the United States had become chaotic, vengeful, and confused after the attacks, while condemning practices carried out in the name of War Against Terrorism. He contrasts the government’s claims about a struggle between civilization and barbarism with his description of restrictions on prayer and the treatment of Muslim detainees. The expression thus gathers together both the language used to present a security emergency and the practices he says that emergency enabled.

From suspicion to detention

Slahi’s account emphasizes that the allegations against him did not begin as a settled claim that he had organized the September 11 attacks. After he returned to Mauritania in 2000, FBI agents questioned him about the Millennium Plot; he says that Jordanian interrogators later focused on the same subject. The changing emphasis matters: a suspect’s association with a known investigation was not the same as proof of responsibility for the attacks that had become the central public reference point for the campaign.

When Slahi arrived at Guantánamo Bay detention camp on August 5, 2002, aboard a military C-17 with thirty-four other prisoners, the available record did not identify him as an especially high-value detainee. Contemporary reporting described the camp’s prisoners as not occupying a high enough position in al-Qaeda’s command structure to yield major intelligence. At the camp, even a military commander questioned whether detainees should be designated enemy combatants rather than receive prisoner-of-war protections. The Pentagon replaced him and expanded intelligence operations, as the debate over classification and treatment continued.

A link to the September 11 hijackers emerged during this period through Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Slahi recounted that bin al-Shibh identified him as the person who had hosted him in Germany and advised him to travel to Afghanistan for training. The accusation gave investigators a new connection to pursue, but it also illustrates how the case acquired significance within a broader hunt for those associated with the attacks. In 2009, when Slahi’s habeas petition came before a federal court, the government did not argue that he was a major al-Qaeda figure or had participated in an al-Qaeda attack. Its argument instead rested on whether he had been part of al-Qaeda through allegiance, associations, and assistance. The distinction between those claims and the public image of a leading September 11 recruiter became central to the dispute over his detention.

Public claims and the evidentiary record

The contrast between accusation and evidence appears sharply in the response to Judge James Robertson’s order granting Slahi’s habeas petition. A New York Daily News editorial called him a September 11 thug and urged an appeal, despite not having access to the judge’s order, the legal filings, or the hearing. A declassified version of the order later disclosed that the government had initially argued Slahi was detainable for aiding the September 11 attacks, but had abandoned that theory and acknowledged that he probably did not know about them. The editorial’s certainty therefore sat uneasily beside the government’s own retreat from that allegation.

The book’s editorial notes approach this record cautiously. They draw on the manuscript, information elsewhere in it, declassified government documents, news reporting, and investigations by the Justice Department and Senate Armed Services Committee. The editor explicitly says the notes do not reconstruct the original redacted text or uncover classified material; they offer the most plausible public-record context for redactions judged important to readability. This limit matters to the phrase’s meaning: the campaign’s secrecy is part of the account, but speculation about what has been concealed is not presented as recovered fact.

Some aspects of Slahi’s description of interrogation were later supported by records summarized in official investigations. Stuart Couch’s investigator obtained military interrogation files, including daily memoranda recording both what was said and how information was obtained. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the U.S. Department of Justice reviewed records of a special interrogation plan that, according to their reports, corresponded closely to Slahi’s account. The committee also documented a staged boat transfer and a Camp Echo isolation hut modified to restrict outside light and visual contact. Such corroboration gives parts of the narrative an evidentiary basis while leaving the limits of classified files and redactions visible.

The expression’s reach and its limits

In Slahi’s narrative, War Against Terrorism joins public rhetoric to the daily rules of detention. He describes prayer being forbidden during interrogation and recounts an interrogator inviting him to pray, then mocking his religion when he did. Elsewhere, he argues that torture can elicit untruthful or misleading information because a detainee may say what is needed to stop it; he contrasts coercion with discussion and points to a cease-fire involving Al Gawaa al-Islamiyah as an example of political engagement producing a different outcome. These passages challenge the assumption that an emergency label guarantees either reliable intelligence or effective security.

The phrase also reaches into family vulnerability and unequal legal protection. Slahi recounts an interrogator invoking his mother’s possible detention and argues that non-U.S. nationals could be exposed to measures unavailable against U.S. citizens without due process. His appeal to the warning Today Them, Tomorrow You! makes the danger extend beyond his own case: the boundary between protected citizen and suspect is presented as a political choice, not a permanent safeguard.

The book does not treat the phrase as proof that every action taken under its banner was identical, nor does it erase the September 11 attacks that formed its historical setting. Instead, it tests the campaign’s claims against the changing allegations, the government’s abandoned theory about Slahi’s knowledge of the attacks, the judicial review of his detention, and records documenting interrogation practices. The result is a sustained contrast between the broad certainty of the political label and the disputed, partially concealed facts of the individual case.