Rating: 
Summary: Hear, Hear, Richard Clarke, Hear, Hear!
Review: Mea culpa: I'm an ABB (Anybody But Bush) ex-Republican voter. So I bought Clarke's book out of a sense of duty, expecting it to be shelfware like so many political tomes-de-jour. Then I sat down to read, and found myself enthralled. Clarke and his editor manage to put you in the thick of the action. What struck me was the great non-partisan American spirit of most people in the Government working hard to do what's right: it's the real thing. The Bushies' us vs. them mentality suffers in comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Truthful & Insightful
Review: Many of the facts and truths in this book can easily be verified and checked out to confirm the accuracy of the things that Mr. Clarke points out to us. Of course the people that are claiming that this book is full of lies, are the very same people that haven't even bothered to check the accuracy. Perhaps because they never even read this book.They are just so closed minded that they refuse to acknowledge the truth, even when it is larger than life. They probably are the same people that claimed we needed to invade another Country because of the serious threat of being attacked with WMD's. Since they are so hung up on what the truth is in this book, perhaps they should also be so strongly opinionated when it comes to finding those WMD's. Of course, they give the President a "free pass" on that issue. Ah heck, let's be honest, they give the President a " free pass" on just about anything he lies about or messes up. This book is a no nonsense book. Anyone that actually takes the time to read it could easily see that the book is done very honestly and from the heart. Anyone that says otherwise probably has a lot to hide and be ashamed of. I find it offensive that as soon as any other Republican or Democrat has a different opinion from our President, all the other Republicans break out into their cult like mindset and start relentlessly attacking the person that actually dared to think for themselves. Very scary to have those type of people in power. It is our right as Americans to form and express our own opinions without the fear of vicious attacks. This book is loaded with truths and that is why the White House has sent out the cult like members to do damage control. They go on all the talk shows throwing out their little cult like "buzz words." They repeat them over and over and over again. It's almost laughable on how they handle things in that White House. Richard Clarke is a very decent and honorable American that told the truth, even though he knew the severe personal attacks would be coming. This is a brave man. Unlike the many people in the Bush Administration, that run and hide whenever it comes to being under oath. That says a lot! Besides, I am wondering when the real "War On Terror" is gonna start. Weren't 15 of the 19 highjackers from 911, that were on those planes from Saudi Arabia?? Hmm, why then didn't we even say to boo to the Saudi Leaders? Oh yeah, I remember, that is because George Bush and his family is very close friends with all of them. Even though it was the Saudi's that attacked us on 911. Maybe it's time for us to wake up and really, really start looking at the facts with a clear mind. This book is full of those facts. Mr Clarke has served under 3 Republican and 1 Democratic President. Obviously he has incredible credentials. It also means that the he isn't all of the sudden going to take those credentials and throw them out the window by writing this book, unless he had lots of facts to back it up. Plain and simple! He is an extremely well spoken and intelligent person. I applaud Mr. Clarke for being such a decent and respectable man.
Rating: 
Summary: Very engrossing
Review: I bought the book Friday and had read almost all of it by Saturday night. Once I got past the first chapter (that chapter's writing is pretty ragged) I could not put it down. The book provides good information that puts many of the terrorist events we have experienced as a nation in the last 20 some years in a fuller perspective, especially if you have only read about them in the news media. It is not a scholarly work but I found it educational. Clarke has praise for some individuals and thinks poorly of others, as the news media has heavily reported. I think his high level of frustration with both bureaucratic and political inertia led him to write the book.
Rating: 
Summary: hypocrites and liars know no bounds
Review: This is an example of someone who is definitely not from this planet: "The book was given great praise on CBS 60 Minutes, a very impartial and credible show." Impartial?? .. 60 Minutes?? .. are you totally out of what little mind you were born with? He goes on: "evryone knows that Amazon readers are highly sophisticated, impartial and highly credible." Now this guy is totally impartial .. right? Listen on: "You Bush-ites need to wake up." Yeah, this guy is really impartial all right. I'll tell ya what folks .. I have read this piece of self-serving revisionist trash which is something that 90% of you that are praising the book haven't done. Clarke totally re-invents history and the Bush Administration is called a character assassin because it tries to set the record straight. Clarke even tries to defend his former statements in a background briefing by saying he tried to put a "positive spin" on things. COME ON PEOPLE .. WAKE UP!!!! This guy is as transparent as a pane of glass. Someone with an ounce of common sense should be able to see through this charlatan in an instant. To me, the main thing is protecting our country from terrorism. Stop being blinded by the badly written musings of this incompetent 30-year bureaucrat with a severe credibility problem. We should be trying to LEARN something useful from all of this and not trying to make more money for Clarke.
Rating:
Summary: Connecting the Dots...
Review: Historically, we in the United States are trained to analyze actions by our "enemies" in terms of "economic" measurables - gain, loss, net...
What we have to learn that human beings are genetically endowed by their creator to populate the earth, procreate the earth, and enforce their opinion on others.
The big picture is that there is and always will be a underlying battle between Judaeo-Christian principles and principles that do not require a "salvation passport" such as Islam, Hinduism, among others.
So if one is trained to believe that this passport to heaven is a better and easier way to heaven than an alternate, you will have people willing to "convert" to such an approach.
How do you say all of this ties to the book?
What Richard Clarke is attempting to do is to say that we cannot deal with the world and other forces outside the United states in independent and separate nuggets; what we as the United States have done in the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and present has consequences - whether we choose to believe or accept it. Every prisoner in Cuba has a relative who will be influenced by our actions; so if we want the world to love us, we have to communicate with words, and not bombs. Ultimately we have to change the hearts and minds of our fellow human beings who share the planet with us. Remember -we are a capitalist society - if we want the world to buy our goods, we have to make sure they are willing and able to buy our products....
Rating:
Summary: The Little Bureaucrat.
Review: Why did the Bush Administration wait so long to shuffle this failed bureaucrat off to Buffalo. His book is a self serving love affair with himself although his policies were proven inept when he was a Clinton favorite. The book is poorly written and I suppose a hit piece in an election year. I expected more, but I guess the Peter Principle is alive and working.
Rating:
Summary: Richard Clarke in Wonderland
Review: Reading the reviews of this book, I find it very insightful how many persons choose to ignore the true facts in favor of revisionist history writers such as Clarke, merely to cling to the desperate hope that their increasingly unpopular ideals and idealogues will once again be voted into power, either not knowing or not caring that their prior failures provide empirical evidence that they would bring this country's survival into immediate peril. We know Saddam HAD WMDs, there's no question of that. If you do question that, just do a Google search and find out you're wrong. The real question is what happened to them. Where did they go? Who's holding onto them? Given Saddam's choices of friends, it can't be good for us, or for anyone else who doesn't thirst for the deaths of innocent men, women, and children. Mr. Clarke testified under oath in the 9-11 Commission hearings that he did not feel there was anything that either President Bush or former President Clinton could have done to prevent 9-11. Period. Should be "end of story" but those blinded by hate will plug their ears and shout "I'm not listening!" Have there been any more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11 under the Bush watch? NO. Have we rounded up and killed a substantial amount of al Quaida terrorists? Yes. Have there been al Quaida terrorists killed in Iraq? Yes. Did Clinton do anything to hinder al Quaida by bombing an aspirin factory on advice from Clarke himself? No. Come on people, get real! Everyone's been shouting about how Bush is a cowboy and a warmonger, now the same people are shouting he's soft?! This is crazy. Get real. This guy Clarke is so full of holes, inconsistencies, and contradictions I seriously doubt if anyone who isn't blinded by hatred for President Bush could, after examining the facts, find "Against All Enemies" anything but an entertaining alternative to reality.
Rating:
Summary: It's time that the truth be known.
Review: Our government has made a practice out of lying to us for decades. It's just that the Bush Administration is particularly bad at it. When our leaders base their reasons for war upon lies - some which have been told for so long that they become 'truth' to those who don't know better (for example, the gassing of the Kurds in March '88 - the US Army War College found no evidence that Iraq was responsible for such a thing - that in fact, evidence pointed towards IRAN) it takes someone from behind the scenes who feels it's time to break free from the web of lies that have been spun. Richard Clarke felt it was time that the truth be known. The Bush Administration can fuss all they want about this, but the fact of the matter is that the spotlight is now on them, and they've got some answering to do. BTW, Clarke's story was already online in 2002 - the White House sat on the transcript for a long time before giving the *ahem* 'stamp of approval' to this book. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,333835,00.html
Rating:
Summary: He does have an interesting story to tell
Review: I enjoyed this book so much so that I didn't put it down until I finished. Some of the points he brought up I've read about in various news articles and other books, have helped back up his story. His point about Iraq is a valid one, which only recently became clear to me after coming back home from Iraq, that we turned our attention onto Iraq before even trying to finish the job in Afghanistan.
I do recommend this book highly, but if you are a person who thinks that our administration can do no wrong then this book will not change your mind about the mistakes that they have made. I'm not saying you can't change your mind about the administration, I know I definitely have - but that took a trip to Iraq, a single rocket attack at our work center, David Kay not finding any WMDs and a LOT of internet research when I got back home started my questioning why we really went into Iraq.
Rating:
Summary: Credible and disturbing
Review: For all the hoopla, the Bush administration's lack of sufficient attention to terrorism is a relatively small, but compelling, part of "Against All Enemies". The larger portion of the book is a fascinating, intimate history of terrorism against the United States and America's response to it across several administrations, told by an eye-witness to history. Clark's accusations against the Bush administration are important to consider in an election year with the President running on his anti-terrorism competence. However, the longer history of American administrations and anti-terrorism gives the book a depth that makes it valuable apart from its timeliness to the election, because terrorism is and will continue to be a compelling public policy issue, and informed Americans will want to know more about the history and evolution of anti-terrorism in this county. We are fortunate to have a book as lucid and compelling as this to inform us. The book discusses events large and small -- as large as the emergence of terrorism in the Middle East and as small as the covert snatch of the assassin who murdered CIA employees outside CIA headquarters. Particularly effecting, if of no international or national importance, was an incident from the goundbreaking of the Lockerbie memorial cairn in Ireland. President Clinton turned over the first shovel-full of dirt with a five year old boy who had lost his father in that act of terrorism. Then he whispered something in the boy's ear. Clarke asked the boy's mother what the President had said. Clinton had said, "My father died before I was born too. Be good to your Mom." Say what you will about Clinton, he knew the right word at the right time. I have heard Clarke say that he was critical in his book of the Clinton administration. This is true. He fervently argued for cruise missile attacks against the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan but was overruled. He argued for a stronger response against the Iraqi assassination attempt against George H.W. Bush but was overruled. However, he largely approved of the growing attentiveness of the Clinton administration to the growing threat of terrorism and he approved of the Clinton administration's activism and innovation against terrorism. It is clear that Clarke admired Cliton personally for his grasp of terrorism policy and for his willingness to act boldly. Then the administation changed. The Bush administration did not "get it". The concept that al Qaeda was an urgent threat was foreign to them, and they significantly scaled back the progress that had been made against terrorism in Clinton's administration. Call this democracy. The American people had changed horses, as is their inviolable right, but the inexperience of the new leadership in terrorism matters created dissonance between the threat as perceived by holdovers from the Clinton administration and the threat as perceived by the new leaders of the Free World. Clarke and others who had developed a deep appreciation of the threat posed by al Qaeda became the Cassandras of the new administration. Then came 9/11. When Clarke evaluates the Bush administration's response to 9/11, the gloves come off. America largely perceives Bush's response as resolute, but Clarke paints it as floundering. I am not surprised by the Bush administration's no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners response to Clarke. His critique is devastating. To Clarke, Bush's expensive, distracting invasion of Iraq only undermined the security of this country while it drew resources away from the pursuit of America's imminent enemy, al Qaeda. Afghanistan should have been the focus of America's efforts against terrorism, according to Clarke. Instead, our efforts there were half-baked and tepid. Afghanistan was a case of opportunities lost. Clarke's evaluation of our current readiness to respond to terror is chilling and credible. "Against All Enemies" is timely and insightful. I would hope its wisdom would be contemplated by all thoughtful Americans.
| 
