The Dark Side; The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals

Here is the story of how we got to where we are today--each step that moved us from being a democracy run by the rule of law into a country that holds prisoners indefinitely without being charged, kidnaps people and takes them to secret prisons, and tortures those it holds through sleep and sensory deprivation, beatings, waterboarding, and all the other sorry phrases we've been hearing on the news. 

Here are a few quotes from the Afterword:

...a battle for America's security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country's soul.

... the Bush Administration was warned that the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America's interests in the world.

... the Bush Administration invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10.

... President Bush and Vice President Cheney have continued to insist that they never authorized or condoned "torture," which they acknowledge is criminal under U.S. law. But their semantic parsing of the term began to seem increasingly disingenuous as details from the secret detention and interrogation program surfaced, piece by piece.