Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Partisan Hack Job
Review: I did not find this book credible. Clarke had many years to do something about terrorism, and he didn't. Obviously Clinton didn't do much either. The proof is in the pudding. Clarke has damaged the national security here. The book just is not convincing. I think Clarke's just a disgruntled man.
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Summary: NOTHING BUT LIES !!
Review: The man is a self absorbed Liar.
Rating: 
Summary: Who Let the Dogs Out?
Review: This book is a fascinating look inside the White House. To my mind the most important revelation is that after 911, President Bush suggested that Clarke pin the blame in Iraq. There was definitely an agenda.In a subsequent "60 Minutes" interview a Bush administration official denied the conversation ever took place. "60 Minutes" responded that they had independently double corroborated the story, including one eye witness! The Bush official was taken aback but lamely said that he "stands by his statement". It seems the dogs have been let out to judge by the one-star reviews from people who don't seem to have read the book. But I'm sure they "stand by their statements".
Rating:
Summary: Clarke is Not Credible.
Review: After reading Richard Clarke's work of fiction, I can't decide if he's either an arrogant and angry liar or simply an incompetent paper-pusher who did nothing to stop any major terrorist attack in the 1990's. In fact, Clarke has told so many different stories in the last three years, I wouldn't be surprised if he was charged with perjury for his testimony before the September 11 Commission this week. He is simply not credible and nothing in his confused and contradictory book can possibly add integrity to this man or his groundless charges. Most importantly, Clarke has done significant damage to the relationship between the previously non-partisan National Security Council (NSC) and the Office of the President. No future president, either Republican or Democrat, will want to risk carrying over NSC officials from a previous administration as a result of Clarke's fabrications. The NSC will suffer as a result and so will our security. That is Richard Clarke's shameful legacy. Those with a virulent and unthinking hatred for President Bush, many of whom have written reviews for the book on this site, are rejoicing in Clarke's disingenuous critique of the President and his administration. But the Bush-haters should remember, the unseemly and selfish precedent set by Clarke will affect presidents of both parties as well as the security of all Americans for years to come. Does that make you proud of Richard Clarke? Richard Clarke's book is no "Profile in Courage." Clarke is clearly not a hero. He has rightfully received condemnation and harsh criticism for having written such a baseless diatribe.
Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Money
Review: Unless you are interested in pure unadulterated fiction written by a self-aggrandizing liar, don't waste your money on this book. Mr. Clarke has shown he is incapable of telling the truth and hopes to make a big profit by fabricating stories. The author spent 8 years in the Clinton White House and did nothing and when he didn't get the promotion he knew he deserved, he turns around and attacks the Bush administration that has from day one done more to fight terrorism than Bill Clinton ever did. Despite what his willing accomplices in the press (Viacom, CBS's parent company, profits from this book) are trying to promote, this book isn't worth the paper it is printed on.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a good book but I don't understand the reviews
Review: I just finished reading this book and I am shocked by what it says but before I will write about that I will talk about the reviews. How many people that write reviews about this book have read it??? It is not a bullitin board for discussions about what is happening in current events ... reviewers, you should talk about the book and not something else. If I go back to the book now, which is reason for concern. I love to read about current events and this is the best summary I know of everything that has to do with Iraq and the war there. It is only one chapter that talks about the Bush administration, but it is very concise and well explained. It explains why the attacks against Mr. Clarke are against him since it would be very hard to attack the facts he presents. Don't forget he is critical of the actions of Clinton and the other pres. Bush as well. Blame is not so easy to assign.
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Summary: Explosive memoirs of Richard Clarke is a must read!
Review: One of the most tumultuous weeks in recent Washington history ended yesterday with the same over-arching, monumental question with which it began. Could the Bush administration have prevented the attacks of 11 September 2001? Upon the answer hangs a Presidency.
Before that terrible Tuesday in New York and Washington, Mr Bush had faced the threat of al-Qa'ida for eight months, compared to the six years of the Clinton administration, who first formally acknowledged the existence of the organisation in 1995, and designated Osama bin Laden, as a terrorist financier. This President and his closest advisers are being held to account for their actions between January and September 2001. In the aftermath of the attacks, such questions were first swamped by collective grief, then overshadowed by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now above all because of the explosive memoirs of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief under both Mr Bush and Mr Clinton they are being asked. And the answers provided by the book and the first findings of the federal commission examining the attacks, are anything but flattering so unflattering that the Bush campaign is leaving no stone unturned to discredit Mr Clarke, denouncing his testimony as "lies".
In counter-terrorism, as in everything else, the Bush team came to office determined to be "Anything But Clinton". The charitable explanation for its new approach to al-Qa'ida is that, as the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice insists, the President wanted to stop "swatting flies" and have a new strategy to destroy, not merely contain, the terrorist threat.
That grand plan was finally approved just seven days before 11 September, when it was too late to have made any difference. According to Mr Clarke and others such as the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the real reason was antipathy to Mr Clinton and his works, and a conviction Saddam Hussein and Iraq were at the root of all evil.
Mr Clarke, one of the few holdover officials from the Clinton administration, says he gave Ms Rice a detailed memo on dealing with al-Qa'ida on 25 January, five days after the inauguration. This document built on the briefings given by the CIA and departing Clinton officials to the incoming administration.
But, according to Mr Clarke, he was, in effect, demoted, instructed to report to deputy-level cabinet officials.
That, Mr Clarke charges, delayed action "by months". He adds that during that first briefing on 25 January "her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term [al-Qa'ida] before".
Thus the increasingly dark forebodings of the intelligence community failed to resonate. The preliminary report of the commission notes the "tension" felt by John McLaughlin, the deputy director of the CIA, between the understandable wish of a new administration to get its own take on an issue, and the urgency of the situation on the ground. The sudden spike in intercepted "chatter" suggesting one or more impending terrorist strikes went unheeded or was downplayed because of the assumption they would be abroad. In May, according to private testimony from Ms Rice, Mr Bush expressed frustration as George Tenet, the CIA director, warned again of terrorist threats in his daily briefing.
By July, so nervous were intelligence specialists that two unidentified CIA officers dealing with al-Qa'ida contemplated resignation in order to go public with their fears. But, by the end of July, the "chatter" had subsided. Wrongly, Mr Tenet concluded that any attacks had been postponed.
Mr Clarke was so upset his advice was not being followed that he prepared to ask for a new post. In June, a new presidential draft on ambitious covert action against al-Qa'ida was circulating. But nothing happened.
The next, and penultimate, key date is 6 August 2001. That day Mr Bush, on holiday at his Texas ranch, received his top-secret "President's Daily Briefing", or PDB. The document contained the CIA's latest assessment of the terrorist threat, including renewed intelligence that hijacked aircraft might be used in an attack. Calls for its release have been resisted.
On 4 September the day the new blueprint for action against al-Qa'ida was approved Mr Clarke wrote to Ms Rice asking how she would feel if hundreds of Americans were killed in a terrorist attack. A week later, the Eastern seaboard was attacked.
By then, clues of what was about to happen had been gathered. The CIA knew that two al-Qa'ida terrorists, who would take part in the attacks, were in the country. The FBI had discovered strange goings-on at pilot schools, of Middle Eastern men wanting to learn how to fly airliners, but not to land or take off. But the agencies would not share the information. Had he been in possession of them, Mr Clarke said, "I like to think I would have connected the dots". But that probably was wishful thinking as wishful as Mr Bush's belief that Saddam was involved with 11 September. Meanwhile requests for Ms Rice to appear before the federal commission have been turned down.
Hindsight, famously, is perfect. Or as Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's last Secretary of State put it when she testified on Tuesday: "History happens forward, but is written backwards."
Rating:
Summary: A great read ... accessible writing
Review: Even if this book weren't the topic of the day, it'd be well worth your attention. Richard Clarke has a smooth writing style that makes complicated issues easy to understand, and he has a fine sense of what it takes to hold a reader's interest. Whether you're on the left, the right, or in the middle, this volume contains information you should consider -- then accept or reject -- before you vote in November. My own reaction was that Clarke's voice is a persuasive one, but one thing did bother me as I zipped through the pages: there are a lot of direct quotes made by various people, and I have to wonder how Clarke's memory could be so verbatim. Did he keep notes? A diary? Or is he just giving us the flavor of the remarks made by others, not meaning for us to take them as word for word quotes? I had this same reaction to All The President's Men, a wonderful book that had details that I doubt the authors could truly know (such as the thoughts of the players in the political drama they covered, or what they were looking at in a given moment, etc.).
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Summary: Thank you.
Review: Thank you Mr. Clarke for your apology to the victims of 9/11.
You are a stand-up guy and a real hero, to oppose the bullies in the White House like you've done.
Your book is a brilliant read and confirms ALL of my suspicions about 9/11 and the Iraq war that followed. I have never seen such a fearsome, and deceitful administration as this one and I greatly appreciate your courage to tell the truth.
I feel a little bit safer now that they've been brought down a bit.
Rating:
Summary: An End to Bush's Terrorism
Review: Let's all face the facts. If it wasn't for Americus dominate-the-world attitude, we would never have gotten bombed in 2001. Bush is a bigger terrorist than Uzama. Those guys at Fox News are playing a tape of Clark from 2002 in which he clearly stated that Bush's fight against terrorism was great from day #1. What a slur!!! The right wing should never use someone's own earlier words to contradict his later words. I change my mind all the time! And now their going to declassify Senate testimony in which Clark additionally said, under oath, the exact opposite of what he said the other day in front of the 911 commission. A intellijent guy like Clark, like all us new democrats, should be able to change his story as often as Clinton changed bimbos.
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