The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,   ISBN:9780307456298

Customer Rating: 

If you want to read the best book on the subject of how the Bush Administration circumvented the Constitution and the Geneva Convention, THE DARK SIDE by Jane Mayer is it.

The book is very detailed and names the people that thought(and probably still do)that it was fine to ignore the Supreme Court, the Geneva Convention, and the Constitution when it stood in the way of their illegal ideas. Torture being the worst of their policies.

Their are numerous quotes from legal minds like Louis Brandeis and Robert Jackson that warned against an imperial presidency and all went unheeded.
On page 47 Chief Justice Robert Jackson is quoted-
"No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming a military role." This advice was dated from 1952!
This is exactly what Cheney and his "War Council" did! That was a passion of Cheney's dating back to the Nixon presidency.

On the kidnapped suspects we are now stuck dealing with the Bush administration's lack of foresight, namely, what do you do with them?
What is deeply disturbing is that some of these detainees were later released due to their innocence. So you have an administration that says torture is o.k. and innocence is something to weigh later?

THE DARK SIDE provides graphic examples of why individuals that despise the Constitution and favor a dictatorial, imperial presidency should never inhabit the White House. The argument that Addington used when someone disagreed with any illegal policy was that "the President wanted this" or "you're going against the President".

A quote from Phillip Zelikow on page 335 accurately sums up the those eight years-
"Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools"

I recommend this book as the most thorough on the subject. Definitely the best I have read to date.

Customer Rating: 

A cheerleading guide for the ideologues. Mayer is too lazy to fact-check, gets many details wrong, and generally draws from two sources: her own, Sy Hersh wannabe screeds from the New Yorker, and fantasy pieces from the New York Times. Her use of anonymous sources is convenient, and unverifiable, and the information contained in the FOIA materials released by Holder -- yes, Holder -- and as a result of ACLU and CCR lawsuits ironically demonstrate her lack of critical thinking as well as her inability or disinterest in obtaining accurate, first-hand written or verbal information. To all of you who get your information from Hendrik Hertzberg, Sy Hersh, and the New York Times editorial page, dream on. Whatever one's view of the Bush Administration, these sources are neither objective nor accurate.

Customer Rating: 

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

Jane Mayer takes a topic, namely the illegal detainment of foreigners and their subsequent systematic maltreatment by American agents, and forces us to look deeply into the abyss to glimpse what we've become in our zeal to squash terrorism. Her excellent treatment and accounting of the hijacking of American ideals reveals some very unsettling arguments and actions by the highest elected officials in a land founded on the principle that every person, regardless of station in life or the charges being brought against them, are entitled to legal representation precisely to curb the abuse of power by the state.

Her research leads us from the germ of the formative ideas and fears of the principal movers and how they, despite appearances and protestations, start and end with the president telling his attorneys he wanted a "legal black hole" for him to dispose of the enemy combatants domestic and international laws and treaties be damned. The beauty of Ms. Mayer's book us that it never, ever loses its laser-like focus on what was at stake and why it is so important that the story be related accurately in order that it, the sanctioned use of torture, hopefully never happens again.

The importance of this book cannot be over-stated, especially if you believe that the idea of America, the "Great Experiment" in civil rule by representative democracy in which no man or woman is above or, more importantly, BELOW the law. The writ of habeas corpus is the absolute linchpin of a functioning democracy, and "The Dark Side" inescapably paints the painful picture of the unraveling of democracy, even if for a brief period, and the potential tragedy for getting caught on a slippery slope that could conceivably result in the premature, contrived end of the Experiment. Read this book if you care enough to ensure this never, ever happens again. EVER.

Customer Rating: 

While Mayer has a definite and critical opinion of the Bush Administration's treatment of terrorist suspects, she does an excellent and judicious job of weighing the evidence to support her opinion. She is convincing in showing that there is very little empirical support for the claim that extreme measures produced any new reliable information that would not have been better produced by conventional methods. Indeed, the historical purpose of these methods is to produce false confessions at show trials. The high profile cases that have been routinely cited by Bush supporters to justify the methods all tend to support the opposite conclusion: that the reliable information was obtained by the FBI or others using conventional methods before the CIA "hard ball" interrogators showed up.

Mayer is also excellent in analyzing the legal arguments provided by Bush's lawyers to support the new methods. In truth and fact, ever since Washington, the American way of war has been to treat prisoners humanely, not out of lack of any lack of zeal but in recognition of the enlightened self interst served by demonstrating the benefits of the American way. The Bush lawyers rendered extraordinary secret opinions that granted amnesty to interrogators in advance of any misconduct. The opinions are unsupported by any fair reading of the limits of Presidential powers and make no sense from the perspective of the Geneva Convention. The essential premise is that the terrorist detainees were nonpersons wholly uncovered by either the Geneva Convention or domestic law. This is nonsense. Even spies and saboteurs are covered by international law.

As Mayer points out, lawyers need to be able to tell clients what they don't want to hear. In this sense, Bush was ill-served by the likes of Addington and Yoo and Gonzalez. Indeed, Mayer demonstrates that the lawyers simply came up with, and then implemented, the most aggressive interpretation possible for the expanse of Presidential power. There was no serious policy discussion of whether the President -- as a matter of good policy -- should exercise all of that power. Mayer does concede that the Administration may have been understandably concerned with an imminent second wave of attacks and was acting from the exigencies of the moment. But Mayer proves that for that last few years of the life of the Administration, this extreme circumstance was removed, and the Administration was doing little more than engaging in a great cover up.

Ultimately, Cheney's power is what explains the misguided course taken after 9/11. In ordinary times, nerds like Yoo and Addington would have been short circuited by review and input from senior lawyers at State, Defense, and Justice. But Cheney was pushing for these extraordinary powers and the nerds were able to cite his directives to prevent any questioning from elsewhere in the Administration. Bush's failings as a leader can be seen in his inability to appreciate the radical break from precedent and his inability to foresee that in the long run, beating false confessions out of detainees was not going to sell well.

What is insufficiently explored by Mayer is the mechanisms at work that allowed Bush to get away with it for his entire Presidency and that now impede Obama from resolving the detainee problem. For me, the true dark side is that of the American people. While we have on the whole promoted humane treatment of citizens and foreign nationals, we have also always struggled to control our violent nature and weakness for racism. We don't want to admit that we torture, but we sure wanted to get tough in the rageful times after 2001. The way to have your cake and eat it too is simply to deny that we are "torturing" and then allow "torture" to be defined not by the effect on the detainee but on the interrogators' motives. There is no question that a CIA interrogator has far better motives and justification for "harsh" methods than did Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz. And of course, with a few very disturbing exceptions, we did not beat detainees to death. But just because we are not as bad as the Nazis doesn't mean what we did was right. It just means it was less wrong than what the Nazis did.

Thus, if we deny we are torturing, if the detainees are all part of an unpopular racial/ethnic group, if we use euphemisms, and if we repeat with false certainty that we actually got useful information out of the new methods, Americans are more than willing to accept it. We want to be deluded, at least in the short run. Ultimately, Bush's greatest mistake was to fail to moderate the rage and panic that came after 9/11 and to appeal to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

It's unfortunate that the CIA destroyed all of the interrogation videotapes. A few minutes of watching waterboarding, sexual humiliation, hanging by the arms, and heads being knocked into walls would be enough to shock all of us out of our complacency.

Customer Rating: 

Dig deep into the underbelly of the Bush/Cheney war on terror and the legal memos that gave them the green light to torture. I agree that the book seems partisan at time, but it is thoroughly researched and a great read regardless. Highly recommended.