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Rating: 
Summary: Highest regard
Review: Excellent book, responsibly written, clear and readable. The information in it is highly important if you want to understand what is going on. Just buying a second copy because my first got lent.
Rating: 
Summary: Corruption at the highest level; interesting, informative
Review: Good reading. The book gives an account of the dirty tricks involving Oliver North, the State Department and the Justice Department regarding the Central American activities. The use of cocaine to finance the contra activities is well documented with opinions and lots of factual information. Even the Israeli involvement in the central american politics is mentioned. Not to mention about the references to the Argentine hold over the Contras during the early phase of the war. Although at times I have felt, there is too much of factual information to digest.
Rating:
Summary: An eyeopener
Review: Most Americans will not want to believe the contents of this book. Scott & Marshall compile mountains of evidence to support their conclusions. This book deserves more attention.
Rating:
Summary: An eyeopener
Review: Most Americans will not want to believe the contents of this book. Scott & Marshall compile mountains of evidence to support their conclusions. This book deserves more attention.
Rating:
Summary: disturbing and sobering necessity
Review: This book has all the possibilities of being an academic pot boiler. Divided into two parts, "Right-Wing Narcoterrorism, the CIA, and the Contras," and "Exposure and Cover-Up" and covering twelve chapters, including a glossary of terms, the book is one part investigative journalism and another academic treatise. In general, the book details the toleration or complicity of the American government with drug traffickers to protect the interests of national security or covert operations.
The book has a number of advantages and disadvantages. First, while perhaps a moot point is that a considerable amount of discussion focuses on South America rather than on Central America as promised in the title. Second, and perhaps an editorial point, while there is a four-and-a- half page glossary of names and organizations at the back of the book, there is a sort of breathless spouting off of a succession of names and organizations in the book. This is distracting and tiresome for the reader. Third, even though there is a phenomenal amount of documentation (i.e., approximately 23 percent of the book (a total of 64 pages) is devoted to notes) and a 14-page index, the authors rely on the same basic sources, including Kerry's subcommittee report and american and mainstream newspaper and magazine coverage; few articles come from the spanish speaking press, and few interviews are conducted with sources. Fourth, while the book is highly descriptive and reads like a murder mystery, it is short on analysis, theory building or testing, and/or recommending policy changes. Regardless, this book is a disturbing and sobering necessity for those wishing to understand the so-called war on drugs in the United States and the reasons U.S. foreign policy in Latin America is problematic, a best. Jeffrey Ian Ross
Rating:
Summary: A Corrupted Patriotism that Trafficked in Guns and Drugs
Review: This is a densely packed book that serves more as a collation of other sources - the exhaustive task of assembling it was no small feat and much thanks is to be given to Mr. Scott and Mr. Marshall for doing so. The story of drug corruption south of the border during the seventies and eighties is an epic of near mind- numbing detail, with dozens of story lines and characters intersecting at multiple junctures. This is, admittedly, no easy read, nor, for that matter, is the violence and corruption the book describes easy to stomach. But if we are to understand anything about the drug wars, aside from our government's own culpability, we must recognize how the US's unending appetite for narcotics is an integral part - if not extension - of our Cold War legacy. Forget the sanctimonious anti-drug bumper sticker slogans. Cocaine Politics shows us the Big Lie behind the fatuous eighties era motto of "Just say no."
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