The Dark Side, Are We Safer?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dark-Side-Inside-American/dp/0307456293

I've read three books on roughly the Iraq, War on Terror theme this fall, I'm trying to catch up on my book reporting. I've been reading well, just not writing about it much. The thesis of this book is basically that the Bush administration has committed all sorts of torture crimes, none of which have netted any information and all of which have hurt the US, probably irreparably in the world. The book could have had one of those 1-2--09 "The End of an ERROR" bumper stickers on it.

Interestingly, as books like this often do, page 114 says:

"On August 5, 1998 a month after the Albanian rendition, in what was to take on the aura of a very personal vendetta, an Arab-language newspaper in London published a letter from Zawahiri threatening retaliation against the United States--in a "language they will understand". He warned that America's "message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully is being prepared" Two days later, the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, killing 224 people.

I guess that would be "very early" in the evil Bush administration. A lot of the book is more supposed detail than one would ever want to know about the supposedly secret "renditions", where a terror suspect is jetted to an intermediate country for "intensive interrogation" -- or "torture" depending on your perspective. The book is certain at least during the Bush administration it was torture -- I'd assume that the standards that they applied to "early Bush" in '98 would be more lenient.

Page 137 has another tidbit:

"When Tenet dropped the bombshell. He said that they had a high-level Al Quaeda figure who just told them that Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein's secret police trained together in Baghdad--and chemical and biological weapons were involved."

When one reads the detailed record of Iraq, a few things hit very hard:

1). The thoughts and policies carried out in the Bush Administration nearly all have their genesis in the Clinton Administration, '98 or earlier.

2). Carrying over George Tenent as CIA director from Clinton was a fateful decision for Bush. One can't really tell if he was incompetent or something more sinister, but many of the pieces of information on which decisions were made turned out to be either "wrong", or "not possible to prove/defend given the infighting with CIA/State and the Bush Administration". Very clear statements made by the CIA that can't be verified by facts on the ground once the invasion happens are taken as "Bush failings".

3). The same policy and in some cases, even actions ("renditions", military action in Iraq, wiretaps, etc) taken under Clinton suddenly become somehow "sinister" under Bush.

Page 167, "Sexual humiliation was a regular feature of the SERE program. In addition, the notion that Arabs were particularly vulnerable to it became an article of faith among many conservatives in Washington."

Uh, just conservatives? The idea that countries where women trundle around in packs covered from head to toe in cloth 10 steps behind, might expose the males to some "vulnerability" to sexual humiliation by women? One would expect that it would be at the very least "different" from their standard experience, and I know I've read a number of articles in the MSM that apparently have that same misconception as those poor simple Washington conservatives supposedly had.

Mostly the book is dedicated to the evil of David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, but Doug Feith and the Rumsfeld pentagon get in for some blame as well. Naturally, "the claim that needs no support" -- that "all the efforts of the Bush administration made us much less safe" runs throughout the book. As the last sentence of the book says "fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools".

As I've argued before, one might think that such thinking might require some sort of objective measure. My statement has been since we had the Cole attack in Oct of 2000 and then 9-11 the year Bush took office, if we are indeed now less safe, we ought to have had something similar to Cole in late '08 and be looking for something, or some group of things worse than 9-11 in similar timing in 2009. Perhaps someone can suggest "better criteria" -- although when one realizes that there were a number of attacks during the Clinton administration (first WTC, Covar Towers, Embassy bombings and Cole), and NONE during the post 9-11 Bush administration, it seems that the statement of us being "less safe" would at least be open to question by those thinking in less than purely ideological terms.

It is a hard book to recommend -- the summary is pretty much "Bush, Cheney really really bad, torturers, failures, incompetent, did nothing helpful, everything wrong -- they ought to be prosecuted as war criminals". If you believe that, then you would likely enjoy the book -- and like most of the folks that agree with you, be willing to overlook the odd little things thrown in about "renditions" in '98, CIA stated connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda and such.

My sense is that we are due for a lot of willful ignorance of factual information for a good long while now. Hopefully whatever it was that has kept us safe from attacks since 9-11 was either something unrelated to Bush, or something that Obama will be willing to keep going on the sly so the string continues. If not, then there will likely be terrorist attacks and the need to respond to them in some way that is "without fear and anxiety, by moderate and capable thinkers". If that time comes, I'm sure his worshipfulness BO will step right up, take responsibility, and give us clear direction as to the "smart way" to handle a terrorist attack.