Judith Miller
3.0 out of 5 stars From the Person Who Helped Cheney Lie Us Into a $4 Trillion War, April 7, 2015
I certainly recommend the book, at the very low price that is consistent with this book's lack of depth — like looking insider the mind of a worm, everyone should do this at least once.
To understand from far more honorable authors what this author was a party to, consider these three offerings from Amazon instead, my summary reviews there will not be repeated here, other than to emphasize that this author cannot be trusted to get it right, tell the truth, or honor the public interest.
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity
For a devastatingly detailed review of the severe flaws in this author's work, and the falseness of her new claims in seeking vindication, look for the just published “Judith Miller's Blame-Shifting Memoir” from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in Consortiumnews.com.
It is precisely the lack of integrity among reporters and their editors and owner-managers that has destroyed the utility of the “fourth estate” to the public. Today we see the same thing in progressive alternative media (married to the Democratic Party) and conservative media (married to the Republican Party) both groups oblivious to the fact that the US is no longer a democracy, the media is no longer capable of finding the facts, much less reporting them honestly.
The author is not alone in her lack of integrity. Dick Cheney led a merry band of liars and traitors whom I hope to see before a Truth & Reconciliation Tribunal before they die. I have no doubt she considers it an honor to be in Dick Cheney's company; she has demonstrated she will “pay any price” to go along with the neo-cons and their Zionist fellow travelers, all to the enormous detriment of US public prosperity and peace in the Middle East and across Central Asia, the Caucasius, and down into Africa.
See Also:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
Recommended the way Castle recommends deep-fried Twinkies — as a curiosity, not as a serious book.
Robert David STEELE Vivas
OPEN POWER: Electoral Reform Act of 2015 – Open Source Activist Tool-Kit
Selected Comment from Amazon by Robert Steele:
The short answer to your legitimate question is yes, and I just went over it again to confirm my first impressions — books such as this do not deserve to be read by real professionals at the every word level, but one thing I do do with books such as this is read every single word in the index and then selectively browse to confirm my impressions.
Chalabi is pimped — all of us KNEW Chalabi was an Iranian asset, and the still untold story from Afghanistan and Iraq is how Iran very cost-effectively “played” the USA at the political level (which ignores intelligence even when the DCI is honest) and achieved huge dividends against Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE, all of whom I consider as toxic to peace and US prosperity as an out of control Zionist government in Israel (I love Jews, had the operation, I ask only that American Jews not be sayonim and respect shiksas). [My personal view that places me diametrically opposite Rand Paul, is that I do not lie and disemble — US national security would be better served by recognizing that we have a hollow wasteful military that should see its budget cut in half while we also create a 450 ship Navy, a long haul Air Forces, and an air-mobile Army that allow us to EVACUATE all foreign bases and bring our troops and their wallets home AND I consider Iran and Turkey to be vastly more important to the future prosperity and stability of Central Asia and MENA than I do Saudi Arabia and the other state-sponsors of ISIS and related false flag theatric terrorist groups.]
Intelligence is not in the index — nor Charlie Allen, nor the indisputable CIA findings later documented in open sources by Jim Bamford among others, that we knew with certainly that Iraq had “dumped the stocks, kept the cookbooks, was bluffing for regional influence sake.” Charlie, then DDCI/Collection Management, in addition to the son in law that defected, sent in over 20 line crossers (family members of those known to be in the proliferation program arena) and confimed this. The real problem on the intelligence side was George Tenet's prostituting his office and betraying all of us with professional integrity. We KNEW there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was a minor millionaire back then and committed $10K to a fund to take out full page ads in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Times, and I was told that our money was refused because our ads against the war were considered “unpatriotic.” As with the Dixie Chicks in London, we got it right, and were villified for being right. So I would hasten to add that my disdain for this author is not limited to this author — I am disgusted by the ownership, management, and craven subservience of ALL journalists who take their daily bread while giving up all semblance of integrity.
From an intelligence point of view, George Tenet committed treason and betrayed the public trust in every possible sense to the word, to include destroying ABLE DANGER and helping Dick Cheney conceal the 13 different warnings we got on 9/11 from other countries (13 countries, more warnings than 13, search for Mini-Mi 9/11 Convergence to get to a summary I respect).
Now in my second view of the book, I noticed something I missed before: James Risen was just as culpable as Judith Miller in supporting the party line. The difference between them, apart from a certain closeness of Judith Miller to foreign powers and the neo-conservatives willing to commit any crime to further their agenda that I do not see in Risen, is that Risen learned while she did not — instead of writing a mea culpa book, Risen wrote a very fine book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War the post war equal of Jim Bamford's superb A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, and hence I give Risen high marks — as I gave Bill Colby, who spoke for me in 1994, and Robert McNamara whom I only knew indirectly through Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century and the DVD The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, high marks for maturing after the fact.
As I say in my review, I recommend this book as a curiosity. It is fairly priced for the level at which it is written. For those who really want to understand the moral and intellectual ojections to this book in detail, I again refer the reader to “Judith Miller's Blame-Shifting Memoir” from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in Consortiumnews.com.
I do not normally do 3 star or less reviews. If a book does not rate 4 or 5 stars (or my highest 10%, 6 stars), I generally ignore it. I make exceptions for books that are so clearly wrong-headed and so clearly dangerous to the public's perception as to warrant a professional slam-down. Here is another such book that I have reviewed very negatively: Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror.
I am enjoying this exchange, the comments are getting more intelligent. I am available to engage all of you as a funded visiting speaker — my Q&A record is 8 hours and 1 minute set at Hackers on Planet Earth in 2010. People who suck at the “knowledge straw” provided by Fox and the 700 Club are far removed from the global reality that the rest of us cope with. I will end by making this point: one reason we are such a mess in the USA today, and also in Europe, because of illegal immigration, is because our foreign policy has focused on enriching the few at the expense of the many, instead of stabilizing foreign lands so that their residents STAY THERE. This is a point I made in my second book, The New Craft of Intelligence.
The US Government today does not represent ANY of us — it is owned by the 42 named billionaires, and outfits like the Tea Party (I am a Libertarian and a fan of Karl Denninger Leverage: How Cheap Money Will Destroy the World among others) are “fronts” that do not realize they are being used for theatrical purposes. It's time we all come together on a foundation of ethical evidence-based decision-support, something neither the US secret world nor the New York Times are capable of today. IMHO.
