![Book: "A Policy of Deliberate Cruelty"](https://www.commondreams.org/media-library/anti-torture-activists-protest-the-republican-national-convention-in-st-paul-minnesota-mayer-a-reporter-for-the-new-yorker-m.jpg?id=32175307&width=1200&height=400&quality=90&coordinates=0%2C58%2C0%2C59)
Anti-torture activists protest the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine, shows in detail how high-level officials of the Bush administration, particularly in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, took advantage of the fear and paranoia that gripped the country after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 to launch "an ideological trench war" and "a policy of deliberate cruelty that would've been unthinkable on Sept. 10". (AFP/Getty Images/Max Whittaker)