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".
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 hed rather bomb Iraq because there were "...no good targets in Afghanistan", what he was saying was that there was nothing of value there; there wasnt 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.
In his gripping "Against All Enemies: Inside Americas 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 books 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.
