The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals ‐ by Jane Mayer and Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo & the Betrayal of American Values ‐ by Philippe Sands

The mudpots are among the less famous attractions at Yellowstone National Park. They are essentially pools of mud whose opaque viscous surface is occasionally disturbed by gas that bubbles to the surface. The effect is startling even though one expects it, and often quite stinky because of the sulfur. Watching the boiling slurry with the periodic eruptions of “mud volcanoes” is akin to watching the War on Terror – nearly all of the action takes place beneath a roiling surface and the average citizen can only witness the eruptions of Guantánamo, the “torture memos,” the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, the rumors of CIA’s “extraordinary renditions” of suspects to countries that practice torture, the abominable photographs from Abu Ghraib, and the waterboarding controversy. The one thing you know about the mudpot is that all the seemingly random disturbances are produced by the same geothermal chemical process. What you do not know about the War on Terror is whether the disturbances are the predictable failures of the rankand-file to follow government policy or the result of faithful implementation of said policy.