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Summary: Absorbing Account Of Bush White House War On Terror!
Review: As the sitting White House National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism on the President's National Security Council for more than eight years during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, former intelligence analyst Richard Clarke sat in the literal catbird's seat to observe as well as participate in the national security apparatus in action. As a consequence, his new book detailing the specifics of the government's progress on the war on terror both before and since the advent of 911 is provocative reading indeed. The portrait he paints so convincingly is that of a Bush administration populated by political ideologues and characterized by shooting from the hip at targets of opportunity. Thus, no one within the new administration wanted to believe in the frightening evidence of a mounting Al Qaeda threat in the weeks and months before September 11, 2001, despite the persistent warnings of advisors like himself. Instead, they seemed preoccupied, as former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neil suggested in his recent book, with regime change in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Astonishingly, the morning after 911 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested attacking Iraq in the total absence of any evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to the attack on New York City or Washington, since Iraq represents a target-rich environment, as opposed to Afghanistan, which has so few. President Bush himself cornered Clarke and attempted to pressure him into finding a link between Hussein and the attack on the World Trade Center on 911 attack. To Mr. Clarke, the Bush administration was intent from that time on to use 911 as a convenient excuse to attack Iraq, something they seem to have desired to do from the very outset of the administration. Indeed, Clarke's impression of the modus operandi of the so-called "Vulcans" such as Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld is one of a previously set ideological agenda, of having a predetermined objective to attack and conquer Iraq, and then attempting to use the events of 911 as justification to proceed toward that objective. Indeed, the available public record suggests as much, with not only Mr. Bush, but also Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice, as well as Mr. Rumsfeld trotting out a garden variety of ostensible rationales for invading Iraq in the post-911 time frame, all the way from the original "Axis Of Evil" comment in the 2002 State of The Union speech to the spurious linking of Saddam with Al Qaeda to the use of nerve gas against the populace some dozen years before to failure to comply with United nations resolutions since the 1991 attack by the international coalition that deliberately stopped short of regime change due to fear of destabilizing the region. Mr. Clarke has more than enough criticism to go around, and both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush find themselves seriously criticized and called to task for their lack of appropriate action, given what Mr. Clarke feels was the clear and present danger the evidence he offered indicated. So this book is no simple hatchet job against the Bush administration, as it casts aspersions on both sides of the political fence in terms of ascribing blame for our present set of circumstances regarding lapses in national security. Yet he reserves special scorn for the current administration, given its self-serving and somewhat cynical use of the 911 events to turn the political landscape upside down. What Clark describes as being tantamount to treason is the fashion in which President Bush has politicized the situation for short-term political benefit without taking serious and meaningful action to actually meaningfully combat the set of threats themselves. Most surprising to Clark is the way in which the Bush administration has done so little to accomplish relatively inexpensive and yet quite effective action against the terrorist threat, such as strengthening the infrastructure or beefing up border security, while hugely increasing the administrative manpower and salaries of personnel within agencies such as Homeland Security, which do little to actually counteract terror threats. Like many observers, Clarke believes the war in Iraq is at best a distraction from the real threat, robbing the country of valuable resources with which we could much more effectively protect ourselves and extend the reach of American power to combat terrorism. Meanwhile, he views the growth of terrorism and the extension of its world-wide capabilities with alarm, suggesting that our ineffective military actions as well as our inattentiveness to key details which would bolster internal security have led to increased danger and higher threat levels rather than the reverse, and wonders aloud how long it will take for this nightmare scenario to play out with potentially devastating consequences. He is utterly amazed that Bush attempts, through a cynical and self-serving media campaign, to convince Americans we are winning a war on terror we are not really fighting well at all. This is an absolutely riveting read, albeit in less than stirring prose or striking narrative. It serves as forewarning that we are on a wrongheaded and very dangerous path, and that it is high time for a course correction. I highly recommend this book! Enjoy!
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Summary: Fascinating Read
Review: This is a complete history of terrorism as far as the American interests are concerned. Pretty detailed and convincing. The author's knowledge of the subject is commanding and the flow of the book is easy to follow.
If you want your questions answered on several 9/11 related events like me, this is the book for you. Good insight into the functioning of the white house and politics involved.
MUST READ!!!
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Summary: Clarke illuminates
Review: I am an independent who is seeking a truth that neither party saw fit to tell us. I lost friends in 9/11 and could never understand why anyone would believe that Bush and his self righteous administration were tough on terrorism. Since such a tragic crime happened on their watch, Bush should admit that he was not tough at all, but incurious, and complacent. Forcing the American people to make sacrifices is how a president claims "toughness." Promising lopsided, exhorbitant tax cuts that are not paid for, going after Saddam for invented reasons, consistently connecting 9/11 to Iraq, and on and on, is deadly spin, not truth. Richard Clarke dares to attempt to explain how the administration shirked their responsibilities against Al Queda in order to make a perfidious case for war against perhaps the weakest dictator left on Earth (we now know how weak and contained Saddam was since Gulf I.) That's his first thesis. His second, more powerful one is that by going after Saddam immediately and unnecessarily after 9/11 - usurping resources from the fight against the real criminals - "Bush" has haphazardly allowed Al Queda to "morph into a many headed" monster that has now become infinitely more difficult to defeat. Clarke argues persuasively that Bush has also made the world infinitely more dangerous rather than safer. In other words, Bush and his team have failed us all and we will pay the price for our ignorant, unquestioning following. Clarke is a true hero who lays out the disastrous sequence in detail. He is unfortunately, as a result, ceaselessly being attacked for daring to speak out. Shame on Bush, and shame on the Repubicans for such slanderous character assassination. And shame on the Democrats for not having fought back hard enough, for Clarke, and earlier, for the nation.
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Summary: very interesting!!!
Review: I found the reviews on this book more interesting than the than the book. Many of the 5 star readers were obviously biased but at least most of them apeared to have actually read the book. The 1 star reviewers seem to be non readers like our president.This confirms something my father told me many years ago. " There is nothing on this earth more pitiful than a poor Replublican".
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Summary: Life Imitates Art
Review: Richard Clarke has shown us in "Against All Enemies" that Donald Rumsfeld is the avatar of Milo Minderbinder. Remember him from "Catch-22", the American officer who thought WWII was launched solely for him to make money? Remember how he cornered the market on Egyptian cotton, caused a glut, then tried to market it as candy by coating it with chocolate and selling it to American troops? When Rumsfeld said, immediately after 9/11 when all signs pointed to the Afghanistan-based Osama bin Laden as the architect of the plot, that he'd rather bomb Iraq because there were "...no good targets in Afghanistan", what he was saying was that there was nothing of value there; there wasn't a huge pool of oil in Afghanistan like there was in Iraq. Bombing Iraq in retaliation for what bin Laden did is like the old joke about the man who loses his wallet in a dark movie theater but goes outside to look for it on the street because "...the light is better there". Mr. Clarke was a national security pro with no political ax to grind. He is a registered Republican and served in more Republican than Democratic administrations. When a man like this documents that the Bush people ignored the threat of real terrorists to go off on a fanciful war of acquisition he must be taken seriously. "Against All Enemies" is another log on an already blazing bonfire.
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Summary: Rise above the rancor for the message
Review: In his gripping "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," Richard A. Clarke gives us the "human intel from boots on the ground" on what occurred in the White House before, during, and after the al Qaeda-driven devastation on September 11, 2001. Read the text, not the hype, and make up your own mind. The book's intro section recounting the day and night of the horrific attack ought to be a model for narrative technique in establishing a complex matrix of dedicated people, places, concepts, and events. Mr. Clarke has done his nation yet another service , after his thirty years in the trenches, by showing us the inner workings of a nation under attack.
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Summary: This book supports the truth about 9-11, Iraq and Bush
Review: This book reveals how President Bush and his followers have ignored and manipulated intelligence to acquire the reality they needed in order to justify their secret agenda.
While they may not have specific responsibility for terrorist acts,
they show complicity by their intentional ignorance.
The Bush people know how to play terrorism to their own political advantage; this book shows how it is done.
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Summary: Split Decision
Review: Richard Clarke has managed to make himself into such a polarizing figure that it is virtually impossible to approach his book without prejudice. Against All Enemies manages to confirm the prejudices of both his supporters and his detractors.
The book has two personalities. The good book begins with a fascinating insider's look at the White House on September 11, 2001. It then proceeds to educate us about the recent history of US involvement in the Middle East and the rise of terrorism as the replacement for the Soviet Union as the main threat to the security of the United States. The book is well worth reading just for this, to say nothing of the fact that its notoriety has made it required reading anyway. The story is immensely important, and Clarke tells it very well. The bad book is all about Richard Clarke, a man whose talents and contributions have obviously never been suitably appreciated. For instance, we are informed that as the youngest Assistant Secretary of State he single-handedly was responsible for Israel's agreement to abide by the UN sanctions on arms sales to South Africa during apartheid. It turns out that every event in the Middle East for the last 30 years has Clarke's stamp on it ... his doing if it worked out, someone else's fault if it didn't. What about the substance of his charges? First, the headline is different from the story. The headline is "Three Republican Presidents irresponsibly ignored terrorism; one Democrat tried his best but was crippled by partisan attacks by Republican adversaries." This is nearly verbatim from the preface and is a fair representation of his public remarks before the 9-11 Commission and on TV. The story itself is actually more balanced. He credits Reagan's response to Afghanistan as paving the way to subsequent support for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait against Iraq and he is quite complimentary of Bush 41's coalition building and the decision not to occupy Iraq afterwards. He argues that another 72 hours of warfare would have been appropriate in the first Iraq war and he contrasts Bush 43's Iraq preparations unfavorably with those of Bush 41. Not until the last chapter does Clarke's book resemble Clarke's public statements. Here, he loses the appearance of thoughtful objectivity and lapses into partisan polemic. It may be the case that some, much or even all of what he says here is correct, but he turns off any reader who is looking for the truth rather than for material to use in a political attack. Many of his policy proposals are persuasive, but like the space-shuttle engineers who knew the O rings would fail, it is not enough to be right. Richard Clarke has testified under oath that the Bush 43 administration irresponsibly disregarded the threat of terrorism. Condi Rice has testified under oath to the contrary. At the moment, the country is riven along these lines and is about to express its views in a Presidential election. It will take years for an informed consensus to develop both about the facts and about their meaning. Everyone is very likely to look back on these events as the most momentous in 30 or 40 years; in the mean time everyone, both red and blue, should read this book: despite its significant weaknesses it is informed and thought-provoking.
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Summary: Frightening if true, and it probably is.
Review: It is hard impossible to tell with 100% certainty what Richard Clarke's motive for writing this book is. It is obvious that he is being partisan at this point, against Bush at least, the only question is why. I don't doubt for a moment that part of his motive has to do with the way his own staff was cut back, and his own role diminished, yet this does not invalidate anything he says. He points out both the pros and cons of all previous administrations, republican and democrat alike; while painting a picture of the Bush administration as vastly incompetent compared to all predecessors that he has dealt with. This picture is terrifying to say the least. I for one have never been much of a political conservative, but I try to be fair and look at everyone with both skepticism and openmindedness. The truly terrifying thought that is now occurring to me as I watch the news and now that I've listened to this book is that both the Republican party itself and especially the current administration are vastly worse than I previously suspected. If this book is true, this means that the Bush administration playing right into Al-Qaeda's hands and putting the USA on the brink of destruction.
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Summary: A Compelling History Of 4 Presidents & The War On Terror
Review: There is a veritable plethora of political books on the market these days. Richard A. Clarke's "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," stands out amongst them all as an absolutely riveting, intelligently written discussion of the most harrowing issue of the new century - terrorism. Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush is an authority on the subject. He began his federal service in 1973, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, served under seven presidents and has been involved with national security until he resigned his position in 2003. After devoting two decades of his professional life to fighting terrorism, Mr. Clarke probably knows more about al Qaeda, Osama bin Ladin and why our government failed to prevent September 11 than anyone else in this country. Clarke's account of the action in the White House on 9/11, as Crisis Manager in the Situation Room, reads like a novel. I have read many firsthand accounts of that day - as a Manhattanite I was deeply and personally affected - but this insider's description of how government leaders operate in crisis mode is the most fascinating. There is much that is disturbing in this book about the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and their administrations' approach to terrorism: misplaced priorities; credible warnings ignored; a lack of vertical communication; lack of intelligence and analysis; little cooperation and information sharing between the CIA and FBI; a Cold War mindset; inability to see the "big picture;" and an obsessive focus on Iraq when there was no proof of a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11. There is more than enough blame to go around. I don't think this is a book about blame, however. Whatever your politics, no one wants the United States, or any country in the world, to be vulnerable to terrorist acts. I believe that Clarke treats both Bush administrations and the Clinton presidency fairly. This political memoir also chronicles the rise of al Queada. Clarke's writing style is crystal clear and concise. His knowledgeable account of the goings-on in the Beltway's corridors of power is compelling and highly readable. This is an extraordinary history of The War on Terror that began two decades ago. Highly recommended - for people from all over the political spectrum.
JANA
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