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Summary: Who Was Bill Clinton?
Review: William Jefferson Clinton is a president who will be studied in photos, films and books for generations to come. He may be the most famous man in America. This famous man was given an opportunity to lead the greatest and most powerful nation on earth and in due course he turned his administration into a "carefree `saxophone, dark sunglasses, and boogie-down anything goes'" parade of self-interest, so says Lieutenant Colonel Robert "Buzz" Patterson in his Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Endangered America's Long-Term National Security. Through Patterson, the reader is privy to many occasions when Clinton's view of national security was no better than fluff and circumstance.
Patterson was one of the military aides who carried the "nuclear football," which is an attaché case containing America's nuclear launch codes. He, or whichever officer was assigned to carry it, was supposed to be at the president's beck and call 24 hours a day in case of a nuclear attack. From this vantage point, Patterson, in eight quickly moving chapters, spins a highly grim yarn. One of the job functions of the president is to keep a set of nuclear codes on his person at all times no matter where he is, but, at one point, when Patterson comes to him to replace last year's codes with new ones, he discovers that Clinton has lost them. Clinton said "I don't have mine on me. I'll track it down, guys, and get it back to you." [p.56] He never did and, despite a frantic search, the old codes were never found.
The book is both a political and a personal tale. We learn much about the Clinton Administration but we also learn much about Lieutenant Colonel Patterson. He is at first awed by the White House and slightly awed by Clinton himself. "I was immediately impressed by his presence, his charisma, and the way he looked me straight in the eye. I couldn't help instantly liking him." [p.44] I personally don't know President Clinton and if I stay in my current tax bracket I undoubtedly never will, but I suspect that Patterson's first impression of him is quite similar to what the majority of others have experienced. Clinton, as we all already know, casts a mighty spell indeed.
Many stories told about Clinton cite his reported mental pathology as their focal point, sometimes he is described as having antisocial personality traits or as being the adult child of an alcoholic. Patterson does not do this. His analysis does not include a clinical angle but the conclusions that he does make are based on common sense which seems to be abundantly available to twenty year, highly decorated, Air Force veterans.
The strongest sections in Dereliction of Duty are when Patterson lets events speak for themselves and the narration has a "just the facts" approach. The facts in isolation are able to speak bombastically without further support or qualification. The incidents that Patterson witnessed are unusual as they depict a president who was criminally irresponsible and unable to sacrifice an infatuation with his own life long enough to allow time for managing our nation's defense. By the end of the book, the reader is profoundly grateful that Clinton's inattention, passivity and indecisiveness did not get us involved in a nuclear conflagration (where those lost codes would have actually been needed).
Again and again Patterson illuminates that Clinton had no business being our commander in chief. On September 13, 1996, Clinton attended the President's Cup golf tournament in Virginia and, while the president mingled and gladhanded, an opportunity presented itself to thwart the Iraqi massacres of the Kurds. Sandy Berger, at the time the National Security Council deputy director, called repeatedly to get the president's okay for launching air strikes against Iraqi positions. Patterson tried many times to get his attention but Clinton viewed golf and socializing as being his work for the day. He dismissed Patterson and refused to speak to Berger. Nighttime air cover was soon lost and the strikes against Iraq were never launched.
A wonderful tidbit of insider information is conveyed in the story of "Operation Bojinka." As he was organizing the notes in one of Clinton's Presidential Daily Briefs, he found reference to an "Operation Bojinka" which was Osama Bin Laden's plan for using airplanes as flying bombs and kamikaze instruments. The author unearthed this helpful find during the summer of 1996 which makes one wonder how the press could have used reports like this one against the current president and concluding that "he knew the attacks were coming." By the same measure or standard, Clinton would have known five years before 9/11.
The most egregious error made by Clinton was when he turned down the opportunity to take out the same Osama Bin Laden. It was in the fall of 1998 and Bin Laden was located and our forces had a two hour window in which to act. Berger attempted for a hour to locate Clinton but was told he was unavailable. Finally, when they located him, Clinton would not act. He wanted to study and consult with other staff members about the issue. By the time he was done mulling it over, Bin Laden was gone. Had a dirty bomb been in Al Qaeda's hands before 9/11 the indecisive and uninterested, President Clinton may well have really managed to have dropped the nuclear football.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but wrong title.
Review: They should have called this book "Chicken Soup for the Clinton Hater's Soul." Or perhaps "Rock Soup..." would be more appropriate. You bring the hate, and LTC Patterson provides a list of lopsided anecdotes, rife with implicit assumptions and questionable omniscience to create the rich stew of self-righteous affrontery that neoconservatives so love to ladle on the Clinton years. It would be comic, if only this kind of polarized personality-bashing didn't come at the expense of what this nation really needs: Intelligent, caring people in the highest levels of government. News Flash: Politicians are all scum. And as long as people keep writing and buying books like this, only scum will ever aspire to be in politics.
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Summary: ugh !
Review: More misinformation from the radical right-wing Gestapo currently running our great nation.
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Summary: People, Please Read the Book!!!!!!
Review: This is for "ivaluemyprivacy" and all the other "reviewers" who litter the reviews of this book and others. Have you actually read the book? Can you read? Please...do me a favor and all the other folks who look to reviews for insight. Don't surf amazon and give us your political bias. If you have something worthy to say, then say it. If you're just surfing a particular genre to vent, then stop it. Not a single negative review of this book has had an objective criticism to offer. You are simply exhibiting your ignorance. It's not compelling. Author Patterson is not a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. This book, though, has value and incredible purpose. It's a "tell it as I saw it" insider's view on a terribly harmful time in our history. It should be required reading in our schools. Stop the invective and open your liberal minds. You might learn something.
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Summary: Junk!
Review: Junk! Not worth the time to read it! Certainly not worth the money to buy it! Not even worth the time to "review" it! Not even worth the 1 star I am being "forced" to grant it!
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Summary: Somalia=Clinton's fault
Review: "Anyone who has read Black Hawd Down knows that Somalia was hardly Clinton's fault. " Oh, wasnt it? President Bush the Elder sent U.S. forces into Somalia in December 1992 to aid the United Nations in relieving a massive famine. In May of 1993, four months into his term, President Clinton declared that MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and PULLED OUT most of the U.S. force. But back in Somalia, with no U.S. deterrent, Somalia's warlords began fighting again. After a series of bloody attacks on U.N. peacekeepers, Mr. Clinton LAUNCHED a NEW MISSION: In August 1993, he sent in a force of Rangers and Special Forces units to capture the brutal warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid and restore order. That force asked for heavy armor--in the form of Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles--as well as the AC-130 gunship, but the Clinton Administration DENIED those requests. The Somalia raid, which ended with 18 U.S. soldiers dead and 75 wounded, took place on Oct. 3, 1993 - more than nine months into Clinton's presidency (and yet, somehow 9/11 is all Bush's fault simply because it happened only 8 months into his watch). Many military experts believe that if the U.S. forces had had armor, fewer would have died. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin resigned two months after Somalia, having acknowledged that his decision on the armor had been an error. A 1994 Senate Armed Services Committee investigation reached the same conclusion. Mr. Clinton's responsibility in Somalia doesn't stop there. Despite the mistakes that October day, Aidid had been struck a blow. The U.S. military, with 18 dead, wanted nothing more than to finish what it had started. Mr. Clinton instead aborted the mission. The U.S. released the criminals it had captured that same day at such great cost, and the U.N., lacking U.S. support, was powerless to keep order. Somalia remains a lawless, impoverished nation. Worse, the terrorists of al Qaeda interpreted the U.S. retreat from Somalia as a sign of American weakness that may have convinced them we could be induced to retreat from the Middle East if they took their attacks to the U.S. homeland. Those are the facts. The reason Bush's critics can't blame the events of "Black Hawk Down" on President Bush's father is because those events had nothing to do with him. They were Mr. Clinton's responsibility, and his alone. "It was Bush 1 that planned mission and the acting General did not consult White House prior to raid." False. Clinton reduced the number of troops to 1200 by June of 1993. After 24 Pakistani soldiers were ambushed and killed by the forces led by Mohammed Farah Aidid, the UN issued one of their infamous resolutions to have him arrested. In September 1993 the Clinton Administration began a SECRET PLAN to negotiate with Aidid. U.S. military commanders within Somalia were NOT appraised of this.
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Summary: Biased Crap
Review: Anyone who has read Black Hawd Down knows that Somalia was hardly Clinton's fault. It was Bush 1 that planned mission and the acting General did not consult White House prior to raid. As for personal flaws. Hmmm, is our current President guilty of DWI and has a past with cocaine - let alone that he does not read and has a major problem telling the truth. This book is not balaanced at all. Workings or an ideological coxcomb.
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Summary: Fascinating and horrifying
Review: This fascinating and horrifying book shows beyond doubt that Clinton was not merely a scumbag and liar but by any moral if not legal reckoning a criminal. If the book's claims are not true, one wonders, why does Clinton not sue for libel?
The author, entrusted with probably one of the most desperately responsible positions in the world, comes across as a man of exceptional character and integrity, faced with something foreign to, and beneath, his own moral frame of reference. Yet there is no schadenfreud or vindictiveness here, only a determination to tell what he saw.
Clinton is revealed not only as a moral horror to whom the word "integrity" would be without the remotest meaning, but someone who the US should have indicted for dereliction of duty to an extent not far short of treason.
By comparison Richard Nixon was an honest patriot.
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Summary: Light on facts, worthless gossip
Review: I agree with Andrew Phillips. Of course this book is a light, easy read. It's about 200 pages of gossip. It's amusing that when this bozo says that Clinton is the only president in 50 years with no military experience, then has to explain that he doesn't include Reagan as a president with no military experience because he made propaganda films for the military during World War II. Um, ok. Also, he complains that Clinton's military operations placed troops in danger with no clear objective, and praises Reagan for his military operations, which had clear objectives. The author fails to discuss Beirut, where approximately 200 Marines were blown up after being placed there as peacekeepers, surrounded by enemies they could not identify, with no clear objective. We are supposed to believe that this guy has no political agenda, but he picks on the Clintons for the most petty things. Hillary is rude? Clinton cheats at golf? I'm supposed to care? Finally, there is something distasteful about a soldier assigned to protect the president writing (if he really wrote this) a "tell-all" book after his assignment. He has disgraced his uniform.
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Summary: Time Absolutely Well Worth It!
Review: Liberal reviewers crack me up! This book is a waste of time? And then they draw on one or two anecdotal notes in the book like that's what it's all about. How about the story of the WH Military Aide describing how the commander-in-chief actually lost the codes to America's nuclear power and was too embarrased to admit it? How about the completely ineffectual response of the Clinton WH, and Mr Richard Clarke, to counter 8 separate terrorist attacks on Americans prior to 9/11? How about the eye witness account of how Bill Clinton failed, when he had a golden opportunity, to take out Osama bin Laden long before 9/11? How about Clinton reducing the military by 50% while he sent them on several inane deployments to divert attention from his personal problems at home? How about Clinton more absorbed with watching a golf tournament that he couldn't launch an attack on Saddam Hussein? It's all here in this excellent book. Reading it now is particularly timely with all that's going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and DC. It's wonderfully done and completely insightful...unless your a liberal whose emotion prevents them from accepting the truth. The Clinton administration was the worth thing to happen to this country in 200 years. This insider lays it all out for you.
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