A History of Abuse in the War on Terror
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
Books of the Times
THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
By Jane Mayer
Illustrated. 392 pages. Doubleday. $27.50
“The Dark Side,” Jane Mayer’s gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it. The euphemistically named but often grisly particulars of the fight against Al Qaeda — the “extraordinary renditions” by hooded agents in unmarked planes, the secret “black site” prisons across the globe, the “enhanced” interrogation techniques, the “reverse rendition” of detainees lucky enough to be found innocent and dumped blindfolded at remote borders — are harrowingly recounted here, complete with fresh revelations. But in Ms. Mayer’s hands the story of bureaucratic jockeying in well-upholstered offices and in the fine print of legal documents makes for an equally absorbing and disturbing story. It’s a cage match between the Constitution and a cabal of ideological extremists, and the Constitution goes down.
The war on terror, according to Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was a “political battle cloaked in legal strategy, an ideological trench war” waged by a small group of true believers whose expansive views of executive power she traces from the Nixon administration through the Iran-contra scandal to the panicked days after 9/11. Ms. Mayer’s prime movers and main villains are Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal counsel (now chief of staff) David Addington, who after the terrorist attacks moved to establish “a policy of deliberate cruelty that would’ve been unthinkable on Sept. 10.”
(Continued here.)
Books of the Times
THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
By Jane Mayer
Illustrated. 392 pages. Doubleday. $27.50
“The Dark Side,” Jane Mayer’s gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it. The euphemistically named but often grisly particulars of the fight against Al Qaeda — the “extraordinary renditions” by hooded agents in unmarked planes, the secret “black site” prisons across the globe, the “enhanced” interrogation techniques, the “reverse rendition” of detainees lucky enough to be found innocent and dumped blindfolded at remote borders — are harrowingly recounted here, complete with fresh revelations. But in Ms. Mayer’s hands the story of bureaucratic jockeying in well-upholstered offices and in the fine print of legal documents makes for an equally absorbing and disturbing story. It’s a cage match between the Constitution and a cabal of ideological extremists, and the Constitution goes down.
The war on terror, according to Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was a “political battle cloaked in legal strategy, an ideological trench war” waged by a small group of true believers whose expansive views of executive power she traces from the Nixon administration through the Iran-contra scandal to the panicked days after 9/11. Ms. Mayer’s prime movers and main villains are Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal counsel (now chief of staff) David Addington, who after the terrorist attacks moved to establish “a policy of deliberate cruelty that would’ve been unthinkable on Sept. 10.”
(Continued here.)
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