The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration Book

I think this book is a good read because it offers great insight into the sick and twisted minds who are working behind the scenes in the Bush White House to promote an arch-conservative agenda.

However, this book reads like a giant apology for Jack Goldsmith's tenure at the Bush White House. Basically, Goldsmith has used this book to apologize and explain away how he embarrassed the White House after the Abu Gareb scandal by withdrawing a number of legal opinions which were the basis of the memos authorizing torture and disregarding the Geneva Convention.

The book is also an apology for Bush Administration policy during the "war on terror". On the one hand, Goldsmith seems to argue that it is reasonable that the White House wanted to expand its war time powers because of the fear of a terrorist attack but at the same time arguing that the White House over-reacted and expanded its power too far. Goldsmith is still an arch-conservative at heart, but believes that Bush overplayed his hand. What Goldsmith doesn't understand is that his conservative ideology is the problem.

For this book to have had 5 stars, Goldsmith would not just have to come to the realization that Bush's rationalizations for torture and eavesdropping were on legally unsecure footing, but that they were wrong because they were poor policy choices based on a total misunderstanding of the terrorist threat that the US faces.