Taxi to the Dark Side is Alex Gibney's Critical study of extra-legal expansion of American Power in America's Global War on Terror.
The film focuses around the controversial death in custody of an Afghan Jitney taxi driver named Dilawar. Dilawar was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention at the Bagram Air Base.
Taxi to the Dark Side also goes on to examine America's policy on torture and interrogation in general, specifically the CIA's use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation. There is description of the opposition to the use of torture from its political and military opponents, as well as the defence of such methods; the attempts by Congress to uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention forbidding torture; and the popularisation of the use of torture techniques in shows such as 24.
The film is said to be the first film to contain images taken within Bagram Air Base.
For those of us who feel that part of winning the vast majority of worldwide moderate Muslims over to a situation of tolerance and respect for Western peoples and governments requires that innocent civilians be treated with utmost respect and care, even in areas where terrorist militants have operations, this is one of those films that shows why it is going to take years of work by the next few American government leaders to undo the damage that was done in the Bush Administration.
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