New book from New Yorker's Jane Mayer: How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

WP: Collateral Damage
According to Jane Mayer, the United States has succeeded in creating an American gulag.
Reviewed by Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, July 13, 2008; Page BW03

THE DARK SIDE
The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
By Jane Mayer



....In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. Her achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces. Recast as a series of indictments, the story Mayer tells goes like this: Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers.

Under the guise of "enhanced interrogation techniques," it has succeeded, in Mayer's words, in "making torture the official law of the land in all but name." Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government.

To dismiss these as wild, anti-American ravings will not do. They are facts, which Mayer substantiates in persuasive detail, citing the testimony not of noted liberals like Noam Chomsky or Keith Olbermann but of military officers, intelligence professionals, "hard-line law-and-order stalwarts in the criminal justice system" and impeccably conservative Bush appointees who resisted the conspiracy from within the administration.

Above all, the story Mayer tells is one of fear and its exploitation.

That fear should trump concern for due process and indeed justice qualifies as a recurring phenomenon in American history....

Although Mayer does not dwell on this historical context, her account suggests implicitly that the present period differs in at least one crucial respect. Whereas the earlier departures from the rule of law represented momentary if egregious lapses in democratic practice, the abuses orchestrated from within the Bush administration suggest that democracy itself is fast becoming something of a sham. From Mayer, we learn that in George W. Bush's Washington, the decisions that matter are made in secret by a handful of presidential appointees committed to the proposition that nothing should inhibit the exercise of executive power. The Congress, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the "interagency process" -- all of these constitute impediments that threaten to constrain the president. In a national security crisis, constraint is intolerable. Much the same applies to the media and, by extension, to the American people: The public's right to know extends no further than whatever the White House wishes to make known.

In the Bush administration, the task of sweeping aside impediments to the exercise of power fell to a small group of lawyers styling themselves the "War Council."...

(Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.")

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/11/ST2008071101354.html

Lets hope she gets some air time on the corporate media, to tell America the ugly truth about the republicon fear & torture & failure machine.

Here's the thread...


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3602202&mesg_id=3602202

Indeed, they almost go out of their way to ignore the pattern that's right before their eyes. Good for Mayer for doing this, even if it will be met with a collective yawn from the Kewl Kidz, who are more preoccupied with what Jesse Jackson whispers out of the side of his mouth than with actual, real-life subversion of the Constitution.

Do we all get together and sign a complaint against this administration?

How would that work?

Can't we do that?

I want a freakin' RESTRAINING ORDER against this regime!!! Can we jointly sign a petition for that?

:shrug:

Congress isn't doing jack-crap against these criminals (other than endless hearings leading to absolutely NO ACTION).

Can't we send a complaint with ALL OUR SIGNATURES? :shrug:

Damnit! There must be SOMETHING we can do to hold these criminals to the rule of law!!!