Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

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Review: The Jasons–The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite

4 Star, Information Technology, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power

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Good effort, interesting, but must less substance than expected,

October 9, 2006
Ann Finkbeiner
I do not regret buying or reading this book, but I am greatly disappointed by both the lack of detail and the lack of visualization that I was hoping for.

The JASONS (according to the author, this stands for the months from July through November when individual stars did most of their consulting) were a spin-off from the Manhattan Project. There were two branches: the JASONS were hired by government sparked by the Sputnik scare and funded by the Advanced Projects Research Agency of DoD (the same one that funded the Internet); and those that feared nuclear power founded the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) which exists to this day to expose unnecessary secrecy.

The original group met in 1958, 22 scientists meeting for 2 weeks at the National Defense University. On page 33, early on, the author denotes the importance of this group with the phrase “distinterested advice comes best from independent scientists.”

There was a major financial incentive: the summer consulting could double their 9-month academic salaries.

JASON became official on 1 January 1960, at first housed under the Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA), then under the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and finally under MITRE, all in theory Federally Funded Research & Development Centers, but in the case of MITRE, often in real competition with legitimate businesses.

Missile defense is not new to the Bush-Cheney regime. It has been a mainstay of ARPA and the JASONS going back to Sputnik days, and generally consumed 50% of ARPA's budget (elsewhere we have speculated on the gains for mankind of having an ARPA for peace).

Early on the JASONS are described as “slightly flakey and almost bizarre,” but supremely intelligent with the arrogance to match it. Their task was partly to shoot down stupid ideas with high-ranking supporters, and partly to think out of the box on really touch problems, almost always, but not always, at a classified level.

DARPA fired the JASONS in 2000 when they refused to take on some of the lame scientists that DARPA recommended, but the happy result was their promotion to work directly for DARPA's boss, the Director of Defense Research & Development.

The author discusses throughout the book the conflict between the scientific imperative to discuss hypotheses and findings opening, and the demands for secrecy imposed on these brilliant minds.

Among the projects credited to the JASONS, with all too little detail, are missile defense, directed energy weapons, extremely low frequency (ELF) communications to reach submerged submarines, nuclear event detection, sensors and night vision for Viet-Nam.

The JASONS could not handle the sociology of insurgency. I find this fascinating. Technocrats simply cannot “compute” real world anger.

The Pentagon Papers outed the JASONS. Over time they added the Navy, Department of Energy, and the Intelligence Community as clients, but the also changed in fundamental ways, moving from an elite of physicists to a melange of all disciplines, including many members without clearances.

The JASONS did well with adaptive optics and STAR WARS.

Putting down the book I thought to myself:

1) The Defense Science Board (DSB) is probably the public adaptation of the JASON concept, and does very very good work that is also capable of being shared with the public on most occasions (see for instance, their superb reports on “Strategic Communication” and on “Transition to and from Hostilities”).

2) Is this all there is? I give the author good marks for investigation and diplomacy and elicitation, but very candidly, I could have done better with simple citation analysis from the Science Citation Index, and some dramatic visualizations of how the JASONs did or did not stand out from the crowd. It is possible today to detect secret programs as they black out, and overall I felt that what this book provided was one person's good efforts, without ANY of the modern tools of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

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

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Intelligence (Public), Terrorism & Jihad

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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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Review: Spymaster–My Life in the CIA

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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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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Review: Blind Into Baghdad–America’s War in Iraq

6 Star Top 10%, Congress (Failure, Reform), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

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The ONLY “Before and After” Book on the Iraq Mis-Adventure,

October 7, 2006
James Fallows
James Fallows is unique for giving us the only “before and after” book on Iraq. This book, while it consists of a collection of articles published in the run-up to the war on Iraq, is exemplary for showing what was known before the war, and how a combination of ideological bias, bureaucratic timidity, confusion, and general incompetence actually allowed this Nation to be led to an elective war of devastating consequence and cost.

The author provides both an introduction and a conclusion to the book that are unique to the book and set the articles in harmony as a whole.

There are other books that excel as retrospective reconstruction and finger-pointing, among which I would include HUBRIS, Squandered Victory, The End of Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, and most recently, State of Denial, but this is the only book to focus on all that we knew prior to the war about the daunting difficulties facing us in making the peace, and why the political leadership of the Executive did not want us to think about that, and why the political leadership of the Congress refused to play its role as a co-equal branch with the power of both the purse and the declaration of war exclusive to it.

James Fallows documents how virtually every sensible element of the federal government, from the military to the diplomats to the commerce and treasury and agriculture and others, all KNEW that invading Iraq was going to open a Pandora's box of sectarian violence, ethic conflict over resources, a collapse of good order, the failure of infrastructure the US would not be able to repair quickly enough, and on and on and on and on!

Objective observers, including the British, considered the claims of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz with respect to the ease with which Iraq qould be liberated, to be the “ruminations of insane people.”

The author's bottom line is clear: the bureaucracy did its job and anticipated every single reason for not going to war, every single calamity that would befall us in Iraq. Where government failed was at the political level, with Dick Cheney closing out the policy process, spoon feeding the President lies from convicted thief and liar Chalabi, and with a full-court press backed by Wall Street and the media, to declare dissent to be treason–hence General Tony Zinni, former Commander in Chief for the Central Command, being called a traitor for sharing his knowledge.

The author and The Atlantic Monthly did not rely only on open sources. They sponsored a war game that came as close as possible to matching all that the US Government might be doing behind closed doors, using only open sources and overt experts, and here again, well in advance of the war, the conclusion was the same: don't do it!

The author concludes the book with several findings, all of which are completely consistent with the other non-fiction books I have read on Iraq and related blunders:

1) Corporations deciding on how to market a brand of toothpaste are vastly more meticulous and thoughtful that the political leadership in the Executive deciding to go to war on what proved to be whims, lies, and active mis-representation.

2) There was too little friction. The Administration got a “free ride” from the people, Congress, the media. Other than Senator Byrd, who shall long be my personal hero for his 80 speeches against the war (he alone among all the Senators stood fast on the matter of the Senate being equal to the Executive and having the right to question this idiocy–see my review of his book, Losing America), our Congress abdicated its responsibilities and failed the Nation. This was a bi-partisan failure, but the extremist Republican leaders were most to blame.

3) There has been no accountability. I remain shocked by the number of books and DVDs (see my list of Serious DVDs) that document the constant stream of lies and mis-representations from the political leadership and their tame uniformed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who should be fired for confusing loyalty with integrity). It is a sad commentary on the Nation that the pedophile charges against Congressman Foley seem to carry more weight with the public than our 65,000 amputees.

I like this book very much. It is important for all Americans to understand that good minds working only with open sources of information easily anticipated the reasons why an elective war on Iraq was not a good idea. It is important for all Americans to know that the good people in State, Defense, and elsewhere got it right, but Dick Cheney shut them down, shut them out, and alone, bears responsibility for leading a young President ignorant of national security matters, on a very irresponsible and costly course of action.

Dick Cheney has a great deal to answer for–none of the others could have achieved their ill without him.

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Review: 9/11 Synthetic Terror–Made in USA, Fourth Edition

6 Star Top 10%, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs

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Among Hundreds of Books, The Strongest Approach to Truth,

October 7, 2006
Webster Griffin Tarpley
EDIT of 3 Feb 07: With thanks to Josh for pointing out the confusion, I wish to clarify the distinction between my summary of what the author says, and my own conclusions from the many other books and DVDs I have reviewed.

1) 9-11 was planned and executed by Bin Laden with direct assistance from elements of the Pakistani government.

2) No fewer than 9, some say 11, governments warned the US at the highest levels. I believe that Dick Cheney saw this as a gift of heaven, and organized the 9-11 exercises so as to have complete operational control of the U.S. government, and he “let it happen.”

3) I believe that Larry Silverstein, new owner of the World Trade Center, NOT the U.S. Government, was briefed on this by the Mossad, and saw an opportunity to solve his asbestos problem at taxpayer expense. I believe that Larry Silverstein, in partnership with the security firm managed by a Bush family member, installed the controlled demolitions and “pulled” all three buildings, murdering the people in them, in order to clear the area for rebuilding and get the $7 billion in insurance money. I believe that he paid Rudy Gulliani as much as a billion to “scoop and dump” the crime scene into oblivion, and I believe that the insurance company executives are in cahoots with Silversten and got major kick-backs, because there is no way a serious insurance company investigation could have ignored the evidence of thermite being briefed to the Senate this very week.

4) Finally, I do think there is evidence of CIA and FBI blundering about and aiding “assets” who participated in the first World Trade Center car bombing, but it is very important to distinguish between bureaucratic incompetence; Dick Cheney's deliberate decision to let it happen; and Larry Silverstein's alleged dmurder of all those people including firefighters.

This has NOT been properly investigated, and it needs to be.

—- end of edit —-

It is with great sadness that I conclude that this book is the strongest of the 770+ books I have reviewed here at Amazon, almost all non-fiction. I am forced to conclude that 9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war (see my review of Jim Bamford's “Pretext for War”), and I am forced to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to indict (not necessarily convict) Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others of a neo-conservative coup d'etat and kick-off of the clash of civilizations (see my review of “Crossing the Rubicon” as well as “State of Denial”). Most fascinatingly, the author links Samuel Huntington, author of “Clash of Civilizations” with Leo Strauss, the connecting rod between Nazi fascists and the neo-cons.

This is, without question, the most important modern reference on state-sponsored terrorism, and also the reference that most pointedly suggests that select rogue elements within the US Government, most likely led by Dick Cheney with the assistance of George Tenet, Buzzy Kronguard, and others close to the Wall Street gangs, are the most guilty of state-sponsored terrorism.

The author draws on historical examples of US fabrication of threats (e.g. the bombing of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor) and many others (Jim Bamford publicized Operation Northwoods). It is an undeniable fact that the U.S. Government has been willing to kill its own citizens and fabricate attacks as part of moving the public.

The author suggests that there is no conclusive evidence that 9/11 was of foreign origin, and to the contrary, quite a bit of evidence that the hijackers had been trained at US military bases, protected by the CIA and FBI, and that the end result of their actions–including controlled flying into buildings and controlled demolitions bringing down three towers, one of which was not hit at all, all suggest a US-based conspiracy.

The author is compelling in his review of the conflicts of interest for each of the 9/11 Commissioners and key staff; he is conclusive in his damnation of their performance and their refusal to be tough with NORAD, the FAA, and many other Executive organizations that refused to cooperate; and he is conclusive on his suggestion that all actual evidence points to the Pentagon being hit by a missile rather than an airplane.

The author is especially compelling in condemning Rudy Guilliani as part of the conspiracy, and as the “bud” of the extreme right charged with cleaning up the crime scene. Instead of making the area off-limits, Gulliani moved aggressively to “scoop and dump” to the point that firefighters rioted.

I believe it enough to want a full investigation that passes the smell test of the 9/11 families as well as objective outside observers. I believe it sufficient to indict Dick Cheney and other neo-cons. Sadly, the Executive is now in the service of corporations that benefit from high crimes and misdemeanors, rather than in the service of the American people who suffer great ill from these terrible mis-deeds.

My bottom line: justice has NOT been done, and this book, together with Crossing the Rubicon, is a major reason why I believe that eventually, Dick Cheney and others will be brought to justice. The people now have a digital memory and collective intelligence. Bin Laden Dead or Alive? Mission Accomplished? Civil liberties at home, democracy abroad? Just who are we kidding? More to the point, who are we betraying if not ourselves?

In fairness to Dick Cheney, I also wonder if he is not the fall guy for Wall Street and the gnomes of Zurich. I am waiting for him to have a heart attack while getting a routine medical check-up….the Ken Lay defense, but imposed by those who are willing to assassinate the John Kennedy's and Bobby Kennedy's of our world.

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Review (DVD): Aftermath–Unanswered Questions from 9/11 (2003)

4 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Reviews (DVD Only)
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4.0 out of 5 stars Limited But Relevant

October 5, 2006

9/11 Press for Truth is better, but this DVD is very worthwhile. It opens with George Soros being concerned about the dangerous foreign policies and actions of the Bush Administration, and then moves directly into asking 9 people 11 questions (generally one person per question). Here are the questions in abridged form:

1) Should airlines have been prepared?
2) What did Bush Administration know, and when?
3) Why wasn't the US military prepared or able to respond?
4) How did Administration respond to military failure?
5) Any ties between US Intelligence and the terrorists?
6) Were there plans for a war in Central Asia before the Bush election?
7) Is there an underlying motive for putting US military into Central Asia?
8) Is there historical evidence that US Government is willing to kill its own citizens and blow up its own ships and buildings as a pretext for war?
9) How has the US Government reaction to 9-11 impacted on civil liberties?
10) How has present legislation affected lives of American people?

The movie concludes with some very reasonable thoughts:

1) Across America people are oblivious to what is being done in their name by the US Government and the US military.
2) The War on Terror is a pretext for imperial expansion into oil-rich areas.
3) Criminalization of the state occurs when the state gets to decide who is a criminal without the consent of the people, the courts, or the Congress.
4) Congress rolled over and gave both airlines and US Government a free get out of jail pass the day after 9-11.
5) We *need* the voices of dissent now more than ever, to uphold the Constitution and the Rule of Law.
6) The Patriot Act must be repealed.
7) Need to rebuild on the basis of individuality and honor, not corporations and corruption.
8) We're in a war for the future of humanity.

The general tone is a bit too left-wing for my taste, but in no way does this undermine the reasoned sanity of the questions and the answers. Definitely worth buying, viewing, and sharing.

Edit of 16 Oct 06: View this with “Loose Change” (second edition) which is unfortunately not sold via Amazon.

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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
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5.0 out of 5 stars 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.

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