War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror

Synopsis

On September 11, 2001, while America reeled from the day's cataclysmic events, and the majority of Official Washington, D.C. - including most of the Justice Department - evacuated, John Yoo and a skeletal staff of the Office of Legal Counsel stayed behind. They quickly found themselves on the phone with the White House. The attacks called for a response, but the president's legal authority to act was unclear. Were we at war?

In answering that question and others in the following months, Yoo had an almost unmatched impact on the fight against al Qaeda. His analysis led to many of the Bush administration's most controversial policies: detention at Guantanamo Bay, coercive interrogation, military trials, the NSA's wiretapping program, the Patriot Act, and the decision that the Geneva Conventions are irrelevant for "illegal enemy combatants."

In War by Other Means, you offers an insider accounts of the personalities, on-the-ground facts, and legal basis behind these decisions Through specific cases, from John Walker Lindh and Zacarias Moussaoui, to an American al Qaeda leader killed by a CIA pilotless drone in the deserts of Yemen, Yoo sweeps aside partisan bickering, answers his and the Bush administration's critics, and clarifies how and why we fight. War by Other Means is a captivating, brilliant, and accessible book, a must read for anyone concerned about the War on Terror.