A review by declaun
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

4.0

This is a sobering account into lack of accountability during a tumultuous post-9/11 era of fear and uncertainty. Jane Mayer chronicles the troubling chain of legal events that supported and outright normalized the practice of systematic torture in the intelligence and some parts of the military communities. Mayer details the logic of re-categorizing enemy combatants and high value targets captured during GWOT in John Yoo's so-called "Torture Memos" to argue for the use of torture for collecting intelligence despite the long cherished international norm of prohibiting torture in any context. For the executive administration at the time, which was heavily influenced by Dick Cheney and David Addington, the Convention Against Torture became a non-issue and all green lights for the use of torture were on despite consistent statements from President G.W. Bush on the contrary. Naturally, there were lawyers, intelligence employees and military personnel who comprehensively resisted the "enhanced interrogation" methods used at the time because they understood the dangerous implications and consequences of the use of torture by the United States. In short, GWOT sacrificed the United States' soul for expediency and progressed measured in a legacy of human rights abuses. The consequences of this legacy are still visible today.