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Superb Context Shows How Clinton & Neo-Cons BOTH Fueled Islamic Violence,

October 8, 2006

Peter Bergen

This is quite a superb composition of the statements of others about Bin Laden, interspersed with very credible observations and conclusion by Peter Bergen.

The book opens with a cast of characters and ends with a “where are they now” listing. It also provides a timeline, but a limitation of this book is that it focuses on Bin Laden alone.

I have a number of notes from this excellent book:

1) The 1967 war in which Israel won was vital in showing the Arabs that it was their own inept and corrupt regimes that were leaving the Zionists in power. Also this book, at the end, where the Sykes Picot 1916 agreement highlighted in the Lawrence of Arabia epic movie, is clearly identified by Bin Laden as the start of the current “crusade” against Islam.

2) Bin Laden was a shy and polite, very religious person with a good education–the classic revolutionary (contrary to conventional wisdom, the rebels are the smart ones that see through the facades).

3) The 1979 invasion by Saudi forces to recapture the Al Haram mosque radicalized Bin Laden, as did the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The writings of Egyptian Sayyid Qutb on Islam as a complete way of life, when COMBINED with the corrupt and often decadent lifestyles of the Saudi, Egyptian, and other Arab rules, were in tandem a foundation for the radicalization of youth across the region.

4) The Pakistani cleric Abdullah Azzam was a major influence and enabler for jihadists seeking to fight the Soviets by entering via Pakistan, and the clearly untold story, in this book or any other, is the deep and constant relations between the Pakistani intelligence service, the Taliban, and Bin Laden.

5) In Afghanistan the back story is Bin Laden the theocrat versus Massoud the tolerant secularist in the Northern Alliance.

6) Soviet invasion of Afghanistan produced 6 million refugees, half to Pakistan and half to Iran.

7) The open sources of information available on Bin Laden and anti-Israel and anti-us plans are legion, and the author is extremely effective in cataloging all of the overt information that the U.S. Intelligence Community simply ignored from 1988, when the Commandant of the Marine Corps and I first made terrorism, and the use of open sources to understand terrorism, a national issue.

8) In 1996 Jamal Al Fadl walked in to a US Embassy (probably Sudan) with plans for attacks on US by Bin Laden, and also in 1996 Bin Laden announced on CNN, ABC News and in Al Jazeera that he was declaring war on the US. My comment: in the US, only Steve Emerson (“American Jihad”) and Yossef Bodansky “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America”) took the declaration seriously.

9) Clinton and Bush BOTH were happy to deal with the Taliban, and the Taliban understood that the Americans, regardless of party, wanted a pipeline from Caspian energy to Pakistan (rather naively assuming Pakistan would be able to protect it), as well as bases against China and Iran.

10) This book makes it clear that every time George W. Bush talks about them attacking us for our way of life he is simply demonstrating either his idiocy or his hypocrisy. Bin Laden, over and over and over again, has specified Israeli and US behaviors, actions, and policies as the basis for his challenge.

11) In 1998 US rebuked Taliban and Bin Laden raised the ante, also focusing on the jailed Sheikh Abdel Rahman, the only religious figure to have blessed Bin Laden's lay fatwa with a commanding fatwa of his own. This individual, in US custody, has inspired violence from 1981 onwards, and US appears to have not understood his potency.

12) Quote on page 211: Zawahiri was to Osama Bin Laden what Karl Rove is to the White House.”

13) Bin Laden explicitly cites Nagasaki and Hiroshima as justifications for targeting US civilians. While the author of this book discounts Bin Laden's having nuclear suitcase bombs, he acknowledges that nuclear waste is easily acquired.

14) On 10 June 1998 ABC aired an exclusive interview with Bin Laden and introduced him as the wan who had declared war on the US. No one noticed. (Steve Emerson's PBS broadcast in 1994 also got blown off).

15) The book toasts the Clinton Administration for both incompetence at getting Bin Laden (but then, the Saudis tried to assassinate Bin Laden several times and also failed), and for lionizing Bin Laden with the Tomahawk missile strike (which another book I have reviewed says included several that did not explode and enriched Bin Laden with $10 million from their sale to the Chinese).

16) The author recounts Bin Laden's illnesses witnessed by others as being Soviet gas impact on breathing, back pain, low blood pressure, foot wound, and NOT kidney failure.

17) Al Qaeda started looking for WMD after they noticed US beating that drum, and probably got their first chemicals from Uzbeckistan.

18) First references to airplanes attacking buildings were in Egyptian press 12 Aug 00.

19) Cheney and Franks both lied to US public about Bin Laden not being at Tora Bora (see my reviews of “JAWBREAKER” and “First In”).

20) Al Qaeda's general guidance to all is to first, cause the West pain, and second, seek to arouse all Muslims.

21) Iraq is teaching foreign fighters and Iraqis who will likely become foreign fighters elsewhere, how to use IEDs, suicide bombs, and urban warfare against the West elsewhere.

Bottom line: has we stayed in Afghanistan, and dropped Rangers on Bin Laden as he walked from Tora Bora to Pakistan, it would have been “game over,” and even if we had not caught him, he would have been marginalized. The author concludes that everything the US has done, both in the Clinton and the current Administrations, has served to empower Bin Laden and inspire millions of others to support terrorism as a tactic against the Israel, the US, the West, and the corrupt Arab regimes.

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2006/10/082009/12/04

Review: Spymaster–My Life in the CIA

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Essential, Incomplete, Deceiving,

October 8, 2006

Ted Shackley

I would normally have given this book only three stars for its incompleteness and deception (outlined below), but Ted Shackley was arguably a giant in the clandestine world, and whatever his crimes of omission or commission might have been, I consider this a “must read” for anyone who wishes to move beyond the entry level in the clandestine service. I note with respect that B. Hugh Tovar, himself an accomplished officer, writes the Foreword.

Shackley's career covered all the hotspots, from attempting regime change in Cuba to Berlin Cold War operations to Laos where he excelled while killing tens of thousands, to Viet-Nam where he helped cook the books and ramp up the “report count” (the CIA equivalent of the body count), to Chile to Iran Contra in his afterlife. I pay particular deference to the author's discovery that the combination of US air power for surveillance, mobility, and fire support, with indigenous irregulars, constituted a new form of warfare, one CIA executed well in Afghanistan.

This personal account is grotesquely incomplete. The author has essentially provided a “CIA Lite” account that is not as much fun as Mile Copeland's “Without Cloak or Dagger,” not nearly as revelatory as “Blond Ghost” by David Corn, which clearly rankled the author and perhaps drove him to devise this account; and not nearly as detailed as any of the books on Viet-Nam including those by Snepp, De Forest, and of course Allen, whose “None So Blind” is the definitive work. There is no mention of Sam Adams or the author's acquiescence in false force reports demanded by General Westmoreland and the politically-motivated Ambassador. There is also no mention of his role as a recruiter and funder of Zbigniew Brzezinski when the latter was a student here in the USA and Shackley was a Polish-speaking case officer trolling for influentials. The book is yet to be written on the triangle between Shackley, Breziznski, and the mandarins of the extreme right like Dick Cheney, all of whom agreed that the capture of the Caspian Sea energy and the Eurasian region was a priority for the 21st Century.

This personal account is also extremely deceptive. The naive reader who is not widely read or is lacking in professional experience will not be familiar with the very deep literature on drug running and money laundering that was pioneered by CIA officers working out of Laos in the Viet-Nam era, and its subsequent evolution into the Nugen Hand and BCCI money laundering bank activities. Nor is there mention here of the Safari Club or other notorious alliances by select elements of the CIA with South Africa, Argentina, or Saudi Arabia. The account also ignores any reference to the alleged activities of Ted Shackley in running arms to the Contras and bringing drugs back into America via Southern Air Transport, going onwards to Europe to convert the drugs into money and the money into more arms for the Contras (against the will of Congress).

Within this book, the author is at pains to document that he forbade any drug activity to be associated with Air America or any of his operations in Laos, that he conducted spot checks, and on one occasion intercepted and then publicly burned a case of high-grade opium.

He concludes the book with some moderate recommendations for change, but most interestingly for me, as the international proponent for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), he states on page 282 that the world has changed to such an extent (i.e. commercial access to Russia and China and other previously denied areas) that fully 80% of any secret wish list from 1991 can today be satisfied with overt means, including overt human legal travelers. We agree on this important point, which most of the U.S. Intelligence Community continues to deny.

I read this book with care, in part because as resident in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, and as a clandestine case officer in Central America during very ugly times, I feel I have walked in this ghost's shadow.

I have three bottom lines:

1) By any standard, this was an extraordinary officer who performed at the very top of the profession as it was then defined. He earned the respect of his Laotian counterparts, and I have absolutely no doubt that those whom he was charged with impressing or serving, were impressed and served.

2) Much of what he did was covert action of questionable legality and value, such as the pin prick sabotage attacks against Cuba, but this was not his fault, it was the fault of an extraordinarily stupid political system in America (Bobby Kennedy exceeded Ollie North on the idiot standard in our world).

3) Finally, we have the question mark. I have no direct knowledge, but I venture to suggest that Ted Shackley, according to multiple accounts in the published literature, was at least indirectly if not directly associated with a number of criminal or extra-legal adventures. I do not believe he profited personally–I believe he felt that whatever he was doing was in the service of his government, but like so many others, I do wonder if he did not confuse loyalty to the system with integrity in preserving the Constitution.

Hence, I believe this book, and the author's life, were one third heroic, one third mundane, and one third highly questionable–not because he lacked honor, but because the system that he served lacked honor.

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2006/10/042010/05/31

Review: State of Denial–Bush at War Part III

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Stake in the Heart of the W Presidency

October 4, 2006

Bob Woodward

Here are the highlights I drew out that make this book extraordinary and worth reading even if it leaves one with a political hang-over:

1) The Federal Government is broken, and was made worse by a President who knew nothing of foreign policy, a Vice President who closed down the inter-agency policy system, and a Secretary of Defense who was both contemptuous of the uniformed military and held in contempt by Bush Senior.

2) My opinion of the Secretary of Defense actually went UP with this book. Rumsfeld has clearly been well-intentioned, has clearly asked the right questions, but he let his arrogance get away from him. Given a choice between Admiral Clark, a truth-telling transformative person, and General Myers, an acquiescent warrior diminished to senior clerk, Rumsfeld made the right choice for his management style, and the wrong choice for the good people in our Armed Forces. I *like* Rumsfeld's Anchor Chain letter as it has been described, and wish it had been included as an Appendix. Rumsfeld got the control he wanted, but he sacrificed honest early warning in so doing.

3) This book also improves my opinion of the Saudis and especially Prince Bandar. While I have no tolerance for Saudi Royalty–the kind of corrupt debauched individuals that make Congressman Foley look like a vestal virgin–the Saudis did understand that Bush's unleashing of Israel was disastrous, and they did an excellent job of shaking up the President. Unfortunately, they could not overcome Dick Cheney, who should resign or be impeached for gross dereliction of duty and usurpation of Presidential authority.

4) Tenet's visit to Rice on 10 July is ably recounted and adds to the picture. It joins others books, notably James Risen's “State of War,” “Hubris,” FASCO” and “The End of Iraq in presenting a compelling picture of a dysfunctional National Security Advisor who is now a dysfunctional Secretary of State–and Rumsfeld still won't return her phone calls…..

5) The author briefly touches on how CIA shined in the early days of the Afghan War (see my reviews of “JAWBREAKER” and “First In” for more details) but uses this to show that Rumsfeld took the impotence of the Pentagon, and the success of CIA, personally.

6) The author also tries to resurrect Tenet somewhat, documenting the grave reservations that Tenet had about Iraq, but Tenet, like Colin Powell, failed to speak truth to power or to the people, and failed the Nation.

7) Rumsfeld recognized the importance of stabilization and reconstruction (and got an excellent report from the Defense Science Board, not mentioned by this book, on Transitions to and From Hostilities) but he vacillated terribly and ultimately failed to be serious on this critical point.

8) This book *destroys* the Defense Intelligence Agency, which some say should be burned to the ground to allow a fresh start. The author is brutal in recounting the struggles of General Marks to get DIA to provide any useful information on the alleged 946 WMD sites in Iraq. DIA comes across as completely derelict bean counters with no clue how to support operators going in harms way, i.e. create actionable intelligence.

9) Despite WMD as the alleged basis for war, the military had no unit trained, equipped, or organized to find and neutralize WMD sites. A 400 person artillery unit was pressed into this fearful service.

10) General Jay Garner is the star of this story. My face lit up as I read of his accomplishments, insights, and good judgments. He and General Abizaid both understood that allowing the Iraqi Army to stay in being with some honor was the key to transitioning to peace, and it is clearly documented that Dick Cheney was the undoing of the peace. It was Dick Cheney that deprived Jay Garner of Tom Warrick from State, the man who has overseen and understood a year of planning on making the peace, and it was Dick Cheney that fired Garner and put Paul Bremer, idiot pro-consult in place. Garner clearly understood a month before the war–while there was still time to call it off–that the peace was un-winable absent major changes, but he could not get traction within the ideological fantasy land of the Vice Presidency.

11) Apart from State, one military officer, Colonel Steve Peterson, clearly foresaw the insurgency strategy, but his prescient warnings were dismissed by the larger group.

12) General Tommy Franks called Doug Feith “the dumbest bastard on the planet,” –Feith deprived Garner of critical information and promoted Chalabi as the man with all the answers.

13) The author covers the 2004 election night very ably, but at this point the book started to turn my stomach. The author appears oblivious to the fact that the Ohio election was stolen through the manipulation of 12 voting districts, loading good machines in the pro-Bush areas, putting too few machines in the pro-Kerry areas, and in some cases, documented by Rolling Stone, actually not counting Kerry votes at all on the tallies. Ohio has yet to pay, as does Florida, for its treasonous betrayal of the Republic.

Today I issued a press release pointing toward the Pakistan treaty creating the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan as a safehaven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda as the definitive end–loss of–the war on terror, which is a tactic, not an enemy. As Colin Gray says in “Modern Strategy,” time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. As a moderate Republican I dare to suggest that resigning prior to the November elections, in favor of John McCain, Gary Hart, and a Coalition Cabinet, might be the one thing that keeps the moderate Republican incumbents, and the honest Democrats–those that respect the need for a balanced budget–in place to provide for continuity in Congress, which must *be* the first branch of government rather than slaves to the party line.

It's crunch time. This book is the last straw. The American people are now *very* angry.

2006/10/032010/01/13

Review: Human Scale

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Secession & Nullification, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Should be Re-Issued, a Seminal Publication Relevant to Governance

October 3, 2006

Kirkpatrick Sale

I am finding that books written in the 1970's and 1980's a making a comeback and people realize that certain of those authors were a quarter century ahead of their times. Richard Falk is one, Kirkpatrick Sale is the other. This book could usefully be read with Leopold Kohr's “The Breakdown of Nations,” Joel Garreau's “Nine Nations of North America,” and Philip Alcott's “The Health of Nations,” on why sovereignty and the Treaty of Westphalia should be overturned in favor of more localized governance with more universal rights and protections.

The bottom line in this book is crytal clear half-way through the book: at a specific point of scale, variable depending on natural resources, technical and cultural sophistication, etc, an individual's share of earned income goes MORE toward “power” goods and services of common concrn than to their own benefit. It is at this point that “the state” has outgrown its utility and becomes a burden on the individual taxpayer.

It merits comment in this context that there are 27 seccessionist movements in the United States of America, and at least 3 in Canada. As we look at the idiocy of the elective war on Iraq, and the very real prospect that the German Pope has cut a neo-fascist deal with the Karl Roves and Otto Reichs of this world–all descendants of Nazi war criminals admitted to the US under espionage cover, we have to contemplate the possibility that our big states are *out of control* and need to be chopped back to more “human scale.” This is a Nobel Prize kind of book, quite extraordinary.

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2006/10/032010/09/19

Review: The Average American–The Extraordinary Search for the Nation’s Most Ordinary Citizen

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Biography & Memoirs, Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

One Extra Star for Cool Idea That is Also Uplifting

October 3, 2006

Kevin O'Keefe

If you are an Amazon buyer you are probably not average, and Amazon reviewers even less so. I was compelled to buy this book simply on the premise that it would be interesting to learn what “average” was. I was NOT expecting an uplifting book that inspired reflection about what it means to be a good man, a good citizen, a good husband and father, and that is what this book is.

Yes, it would have benefitted from maps as well as a statistical table and a calendar of the search, and I would normally have given it four stars for lacking those “visualization & closure” elements, but I simply cannot get over the fact that this book made me feel good about America and good about the standard run of the mill American.

The idiocy and mendacity of our leaders aside, this is a great Nation, and I have tears in my eyes as I conclude the book, where the man chosen by the author as the average American, informed on the 4th of July, properly concludes that it is a great honor. Honor indeed. This is a superb book.

2006/09/292009/12/04

Review: The Looming Tower–Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History, Insurgency & Revolution, Iraq

Brings us from 1940's to date, superb writing

September 29, 2006

Lawrence Wright

Edit of 11 Sep 08 to add links. the rest of the world (at least one quarter of the Germans, most Arabs, mixed ratios elsewhere) is quite certain that 9-11 was either made to happen by the US Government, or allowed to happen (my own view, with Silverstein adding controlled demolitions and Gulliani helping destroy the crime scene quickly).

This is an extraordinary, gifted piece of work that covers a broader swath of history, a deeper cultural well, and more detailed personal portraits of the key players, than any other book I have read in this area. It joins Louise Richardson's “What Terrorists Want,” Dick Clarke's “Against All Enemies,” and Professor Pape's “Dying to Win” as a core reference on the rise of suicidal terrorism.

I especially liked the historical survey from the 1940's through the 1960's (Six Day War), 1970's (Sadat and rise of Arab despots), 1980's (arming of the jihadists in Afghanistan) to the 1990's (Sudan as home base).

Towering sentence: 9-11 began in Egyptian prisons–“torture created an appetite for revenge.” It was the combination of Saudi government money and Egyptian prisoners and revolutionaries tortured by that government, and then inspired by jihad in Afghanistan, that created a global remobilization of terrorism.

Penetrating insight: Arab governments funded jihadists to get their rabble-rousers out of town, but no one gave any thought to how this was creating a permanent “stateless vagrant mob of mercenaries.”

The level of detail across the book is very good, and presented in an easy to read and compelling fashion. For all that I have read, here are a few gems from this particular book:

1) Despite Clinton's claims, US simply did not take Al Qaeda seriously until late 1990's, and then the lionized Bin Laden with the Tomahawk attack, in the process enriching Bin Laden by $10 million, the price he got from the Chinese for the unexploded Tomahawk missiles that failed.

2) FBI blew it in 1996 (the book does not mention the two walk-ins that the FBI brushed off in 2000 and 2001), CIA refused to share key information with FBI, NSA refused to share Bin Laden transcripts with CIA or the FBI, the grotesque incompetence and bureaucratic idiocy–even for someone like myself who has worked for the CIA, is simply unbelievable.

3) US support to Israel, US tolerance of Israeli genocide against Palestinians, is hands down more aggravating to the Arabs than US presence in Saudi Arabia, but it was the latter that began Bin Laden's radicalization. The US seriously misunderstood the negative impact of staying on in Saudi Arabia, and Dick Cheney's violation of his promise to pull out of Saudi Arabia when Iraq was displaced from Kuwait, can be said to be directly responsible for pushing Bin Laden over the edge.

4) Muslim Brothers of Egypt have mastered “civil affairs” and are able to sponsor hospitals, schools, factories, and welfare societies at the same time that they sponsor a violent secret side.

5) Both communism and capitalism are despised by the fundamentalists for their materialism; this slightly outranks the secular Arab dictators. Jews, England, and America are in for a rough time.

6) The author has done a really fine job of investigating and recounting details of Bin Laden's life including his illnesses, his genius, and his occasional possible loss of sanity.

7) The Saudi government is a hollow shell waiting to implode; Saudi Muslims are 1% of the global Muslim population, but Saudis fronted 90% of the money for mosques and maddresses all over the world, exporting radical Wahabbism over more balanced Islamic variants that tolerate Jews and Christians.

8) Al Qaeda playbook written by an Arab trained by US Special Forces.

9) Bin Laden was happily retired in Sudan, he was re-energized out of retirement by US forces staying in Saudi Arabia, and by the King stripping him of his citizenship.

10) US economic interests world-wide, not just cultural targets within the USA, are part of Bin Laden's total plan. He believes that the US will fragment over time, as the Soviet Union did (see my review of Joel Garreau's “Nine Nations of North America”_.

11) 1994 was the first time airplanes into the World Trade Center were discussed with Bin Laden. 2001, seven years later. My personal view, based on this book and others, is that we are about to be hit again, and I would not be surprised if it were a combination of a Taliban attack on Kabul, a nuclear or bio-chemical event in the US, and precision attacks on Saudi oil pumping stations.

12) Egypt recruits boy spies on their parents by drugging them and sodomizing them, taking photos, and threatening to publish the photos. Charming…..just the kind of stuff George Bush Junior wants to legalize.

The author concludes the book with a very good nine page description (one paragraph each) of the key characters in this saga. It's not over, by a long shot–as this and other books document, terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and we cannot beat Bin Laden by playing into his hands with heavy handed occupation in Iraq and lightweight easily over-run forces in Afghanistan. The next twelve months could see a great deal more damage done to the West by disparate allies from Iran to Hezbollah to Al Qaeda to white supremacists to a new break-out of terrorism in Asia.

Other books that complement this one:
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory

DVDs
Why We Fight
9/11 Mysteries Part 1: Demolitions

2006/09/162011/02/17

Review: State of Emergency–The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics, Priorities

Patrick Buchanan is the Paul Revere of Our Time

September 16, 2006

Patrick Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan is much more serious, much more relevant, than either Newt Gingrich or the current illiterate President of the United States (illegally, through two stolen elections), George “Bring It On” Bush.

He opens the books with quotes from Teddy Roosevelt and from Wilson that set the context perfectly: you cannot have a Nation if there is, as Alexander Hamilton warned us, a tyranny of minorities that do not buy into the proposition of citizenship and loyalty to the flag.

The author is clearly very well read and historically grounded. He noted that Nations dye when they have dying populations, disintegrating cultures, and unresisted invasions.

His most important point, across the book, is that the Mexicans are invading deliberately and in massive force, and the federal government is failing to fulfill its constitutional responsibility for protecting states from invasion. He specifically suggests, and I agree, that Bush Junior is impeachable for failing to protect (and indeed inciting) illegal immigration.

According to the author:

1) We have gone from 5 to 57 million Asians and Hispanics;

2) There is moral rot in both parties;

3) 1 in 12 of the illegal aliens is a proven criminal

4) Aliens are 12% of the population and 30% of the incarcerated;

5) US allows foreign governments, e.g. China, to refuse returns;

6) Local police are hand-cuffed and not allowed to arrest and depot illegal aliens;

7) Illegal immigrants are a major vector for disease and potential pandemics.

8) Mexico, at 6 to 1, is the primary offender, and 58% of Mexicans believe that the US Southwest belongs to them and they are simply taking it back (to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo line);

9) CORPORATIONS are demanding the importation of poverty by supporting illegal immigration; CORPORATIONS are passing on to the individual taxpayer the social, cultural, and economic costs of accepting millions of poor, uneducated illegal aliens.

10) The churches and the film industry have become propagandists for illegal immigration.

11) America has lost its Christian characters, and is now a mélange of disloyal self-serving religions of all kinds, including Wahabbism which has since the 1990's had imams preaching the murder of Americans from pulpits on American soil, to individuals NOMINALLY U.S. citizens.

12) The emergence of the Minutemen (now spreading across America, not just at the border) is reflective of the fact that illegal immigration is the “crisis of the age.”

12) Babies born in America should NOT be automatically accorded American citizenship unless one of their parents is American; nor should dual citizenship be allowed. RIGHT ON!!!!

This is a tremendous book. I respect the author very much, and believe that he merits the full support and attention of every loyal American that believes that one should speak the language of America–English–and honor the flag of America. The illegal immigrants that displayed the Mexican flag during the recent demonstrations should all be deported.

America has lost its integrity. We need a new leadership team that can protect our borders, protect our middle class, protect our economy, and protect our culture. George Bush is a much greater threat to America than Bin Laden, because he is busy selling America out to the Saudis for oil, to the Mexicans for migrant labor, and to the Colombians for drug profits.

Pat Buchanan is a bright shining light, and this book is a very important contribution to the dialog needed to save the Republic.

Category: 5 Star

Review: The Osama bin Laden I Know–An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader