The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer

Interesting book so far. The subtitle is "The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Tunred Into a War on American Ideals." Some of the stuff in this book is absolutely terrifying. I knew that the various government agencies, in hindsight, had a lot of information pointing to what was going to happen on September 11, 2001, but I had never read about all of the information in one place at one time. It's horrendous to think about how close we were to preventing 9/11 and yet we didn't. What's really scary, though, is how little we have done as a nation to address the failures that lead to us not preventing 9/11. And then the aftermath is equally terrifying. Learning what those in the highest echelons of government were thinking and doing immediately after 9/11 is very enlightening. The book spends a fair amount of time explaining the history and background of some of the players who came to the foreground in the "war on terror" and how 9/11 played into their world-view and what they were pre-disposed to try and accomplish. Anyway, I'm barely 1/3 of the way through the book, and parts of it are a tough slog. It's not necessarily gripping reading. The stuff I am reading now is about the various legal offices of the government and how they were sidelined and marginalized in favor of what the White House (mostly Cheney, according to this book) wanted to do in the "unlawful enemy combatant" "military commissions." I shouldn't be, but I am still amazed at the careers that were intentionally ruined, careers of good people trying to do their job. Some of them, more than just a few, were absolutely shoved out of government and black-listed in the private sector for refusing to toe the administration's line on torture and rendition and things like that. I wonder if, 100 years from now, we will have a good grasp of what happened to the United States and its most sacred and cherished ideals since 9/11. It is just so so sad.