Terrorism & Jihad – Page 11 – Public Intelligence Blog

2007/06/212009/10/16

Review: Devil’s Game–How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (American Empire Project)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Congress (Failure, Reform), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Terrorism & Jihad, War & Face of Battle

Amazon Page

Complements Web of Deceit

June 21, 2007

Robert Dreyfuss

Robert Dreyfuss interviewed me once, for a piece in WIRED or Mother Jones, and I remember him as a serious, methodical person. It is no surprise to find him producing this meticulously documented and objectively constructed history, a perfect complement to Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush, on whose Amazon page I have a more detailed review of the overall topic.

The author captures the essence in his own introduction: the US was so focused on anti-communism and anti-Soviet campaigns that it deliberately chose to sponsor extreme rightist Islamic fundamentalists, fascists in their own way as the extreme right in America is today (see American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America).

The author is very specific in addressing how the US feared “nationalism, humanism, secularism, socialism” in its obsession with countering the Soviets, and so it chose to aid Islamic fundamentalists who opposed those more rational and publicly-oriented altneratives. In essence, the premise of the invasion of Iraq, that we are doing it to spread democracy, is yet another big lie–we have been denying democracy to the Arabs every since Roosevelt met with the Saudi king and formed a pact with the devil himself.

I totally agree with the author as he documents and sums up his own view that “A war on terrorism is precisely the wrong way to deal with the challenge posed by political Islam.”

The author offers four prescriptions for US action, and at the end here I list some relevant books that provide a broader context:

1) Remove the grievances–US troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, support for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians, support for Israel's plans to attack Iran

2) Abandon imperial pretentions in the Middle East

3) Refrain from seeking to impose preferences–political, economic, cultural, or religious, on the region

4) Stop making bellicose threats against Islamic nations from Iran to Sudan (and I would add, to Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, and others)

I am reminded by this book of the common sense prescriptions in Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. The raw fact is that the global literature is coming around to three points of view that are inter-related:

1) Bin Laden is largely right and on firm grounds in taking on both the debauched Saudi regime and the amoral unilaterally invasive US

2) Dick Cheney has committed so many high crimes and misdemeanors, with similar high crimes at the operational level (warrantless wiretapping on Americans, rendition and torture of all others) that America has lost all moral legitimacy both at home and abroad

3) We have the wrong global strategy, indeed we have no global strategy–we are trying to put out a forest fire with a hammer.

Some of the reviewers jump to conclusions, for example, the CIA was NOT really trying to ramp up the war in Afghanistan, until Congressman Charlie Wilson made it his personal vendetta. There is a much larger context within which American incompletence at world affairs can be judged, and it includes the shortcomings of the US educational system, the corruption of the US electoral system, and the grotesque dysfunctionality of the “winner take all” US system of governance. I hope some of the books below–or at least my reviews of them–will provide addtional context for this excellent work. See Web of Deceit for detailed comments I choose not to repeat here–the two books are a good combination with some overlap.

The American Empire Project has produced some really first-rate books on their chosen theme, and for this they are to be praised.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
The Black Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

2007/05/052009/12/04

Review: At the Center of the Storm–My Years at the CIA

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Corruption, Crime (Government), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

Deceptive Beginning, Vital Middle, Disappointing End,

May 5, 2007

George Tenet

This is a very good book. There are some extremely important nuggets in here that essentially put the final nail in Dick Cheney's coffin while certifying the importance of holding Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Cambone accountable for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Condi Rice continues to be depicted, in this book and others, as a zero in the sense of having been ignored, sidelined, or run over by Dick Cheney and his minions.

The book loses one star for a lack of prior context. George Tenet was Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) for many years, and then Intelligence Director for Bill Clinton. He avoids any mention of his long-standing role in helping dismantle the very IC he ended up leading, and he is terribly deceptive when he says he asked for more funding for anti-terrorism, but fails to mention his inability to redirect funds within the $35-40 billon he had at the time. Today the IC has $60-70B and we are no safer–these clowns cannot even put together a consolidated accurate terrorist watchlist five years after 9/11.

The bottom line on the author is that he is a big-hearted staffer, not a leader and not a strategic thinker. He was a place-holder in a job that two presidents saw fit to relegate to losers–a mouse, a pit-bull, and a turtle.

He takes credit for months of redesign dialog but fails to point out that there was no substantive contact with iconoclasts, published author-practitioners. I am especially angry that he placed Buzzy Krongard in as Executive Director. In my view, Krongard was there to look out for Wall Street interests and ensure Brown and Root did not get caught smuggling drugs into the USA through New Orleans and heavy equipment being returned to the USA “for repairs.” I've come to the conclusion, after thirty years in this business, that there are four CIA's: 1) White House sychophants; 2) Wall Street support via Carlyle Group and a small network of retired intermediaries; 3) the “front” of earnest people working out of official installations, incapable of actually doing serious spying (I was part of this group); and finally, a multinational “dirty deeds” arm that does terribly immoral and illegal things with Saudi money, Egyptian sodomy of children (photographed so as to force them to spy on their fathers), and so on.

In many ways, this book is a capstone account of the death of US secret intelligence. It's gone. The DNI, DCI and USDI are earnest men, but they will fail because they simply do not comprehend the “paradigms of failure” (essay online) and are not willing to contemplate a clean-sheet fresh-start. On page 26 the author confirms that “time and technology [have] passed us by.”

As fascinating as his claims are of ramping up on Bin Laden, I go with Michael Sheuer's damnation as published by the Washington Post. Condi Rice blew off warnings, Dick Cheney focused on energy conspiracies with Enron and Exxon, and the plain truth is that the CIA refused to read the book by Yossef Bodansky or view the PBS broadcast in 1994 by Steve Emerson. They closed themselves off from open sources (called “Open Sores” within the now near-moronic secret world).

The middle of the book is sensational. Chapter Thirteen on “The Threat Matrix” and the succeeding chapters in Part II of the book are superb and contain many nuggets that restored much of my respect for the author.

The author damns Cheney on page 138 for taking over the National Security Council and it is clear that if there is one person to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, it is not the President, but rather the Vice President.

On page 317 he tells us that “Policy makers have a right to their own opinions but not their own set of facts.”

He slams Rumsfeld for blocking several 737's full of State people and language-qualified individuals specifically trained and organized to get the post-war reconstruction off to a good start. He does not mention Rumsfeld's idiocy in allowing Pakistan to evacuate 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda people from Tora Bora, but he does mention that General Tommy Franks refused to put the Rangers in Bin Laden's path, claiming he needed weeks to set it up (this is of course baloney, they could have been air-dropped in 24 hours with a 3-day resupply 24 hours after arrival).

He defends himself on the “slam dunk” as applying to the presentation plan for the UN, not the intelligence. I want to believe this, but the fact that he took imagery and other materials to the first NSC meeting, significantly on Iraq rather than terrorism, gives me pause. I certainly do believe that Dick Cheney hijacked the White House and closed out the entire policy process, but George Tenet, Colin Powell, and our generals all failed us by not resigning and screaming out at the top of their lungs against the high crimes and misdemeanors they witnessed Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Steve Cambone commit, day after day.

He lays bare Cheney's misbehavior in stating on 26 August 2002 that “there is no doubt” on Iraq's having weapons of mass deception but very strangely does not mention that both Hussein's son-in-law who defected to the US, and every one of the 25+ line crossers that Charlie Allen sent in, all said the same thing: kept the cook books, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional ego's sake.

He slams Paul Bremer for de-Bathification and confirms that “Iraq came at exactly the right time for Al Qaeda.”

The author avoids major criticism of Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, but he reveals the DoD operations against Iran. He tells us about Chalabi hoaxing DIA for millions, and that President Bush ordered Chalabi off the payroll.

He confirms Paul William's view on Al Qaeda having nuclear capabilities.

Pre 9/11 air travelers believed “be calm, see Cuba” when hijacked. Pre 9-11, and today still, our senior government executives are still confusing loyalty with integrity. We can do better. We need, right now, a “Smart Nation.”

On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You
The True Cost of Conflict/Seven Recent Wars and Their Effects on Society
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

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2006/12/272009/12/04

Review: Target Iran–The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Congress (Failure, Reform), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

A,mazon Page

Critical Piece of the Puzzle, Not the Whole Picture,

December 27, 2006

Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter was proven correct about Iraq not having weapons of mass destruction, and this alone demands our respectful attention to his views of the foolishness of attacking Iran.

There are other reviews of the substance of this book that are excellent, so here I just wish to contribute three supporting observations:

1) Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror by LtGen Thomas McInerney and MajGen Paul Vallely, was published in 2004 and lays out the complete plan for US military domination of the Middle East, with Iran following Iraq, and then Syria etcetera. As lunatic as the plan may be (see my review for more details) it is a plan that will be carried out as long as Dick Cheney remains Vice President and George Bush Junior remains a fool who is clearly in way over his head.

2) Howard Bloom, who understood the coming Sunni versus Shi'ite world war for the soul of Islam, writing about it in The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History, now warns of a likely Iranian masterplan that first used Ahmed Chalabi to lure the American neo-cons into Iraq, and now has lured four carriers, two strike groups and an amphibious group within range of the supersonic Sunburn missile that carried a nuclear warhead, can explode a carrier, and travel at 3.0 Mach straight line, or 2.2 Mach when zig-zagging.

3) In addition to Scott Ritter's excellent analysis of how Iran can turn off the oil supply in Iran, portions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Kuwait, it is helpful to consider the extreme vulnerability of the US land supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad. A slide by Webster Tarpley showing this vulnerability is posted above.

Ritter gets a lot of respect from me–his integrity took him from a relatively minor position as a Marine Corps field grade officer, and elevated him to the role of speaker of truth for the public. I think he is right–the US will attack Iran, ostensibly in support of Israel–and this will be the greatest disaster of the 21st century, setting off a true world war between Sunni and Shi'ite in which the Christians are the “collateral damage” while the Jews experience a new form of genocide. I just shake my head, feeling helpless, wondering what it takes to get Scott Ritter's important knowledge in front of Congress.

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2006/10/082009/12/04

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

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

Amazon Page

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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2006/10/042010/05/31

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.

2006/09/082009/12/04

Review: What Terrorists Want–Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (Hardcover)

4 Star, Terrorism & Jihad

Everything Bush-Cheney Refused to Listen To…,

September 8, 2006

Louise Richardson

This is without question one of a handful of books that must be read by anyone who is serious about neutralizing terrorism as a tactic, avoiding the incitement of more terrorism, and acting professionally and morally around the globe. Sadly, that does not include the neo-conservatives who substitute dogma for reality, and war profiteering for peacemaking.

Unlike Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Professor Robert Pape, which I highly recommend as a complement to this book, the author here has written a definitive history, a rational appreciation, and ends with six specific recommendations, each of which has been gleefully and ignorantly violated by the current Administration, which now declares Bin Laden to be “irrelevant” and continues to cover up the fact that Rumsfeld authorized the Pakistanis to fly 3000 Al Qaeda out of Tora Bora, and Rumsfeld refused to order a Ranger battalion in to capture Bin Laden during the four days that CIA has “eyes on” and tracked him to the border (see my reviews of Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander and First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan).

While the author gets very high marks for putting together the most current, most in-depth, and most professional review of the subject, there is little here that is new to those of us who have been focused on revolution, instability, and the TACTIC of terrorism for the past 30 years. Terrorism is a law enforcement issue, in the context of a comprehensive stabilization and reconstruction program that–as the author recommends–isolates the terrorists from complicit communities. See also Rage of the Random Actor: Disarming Catastrophic Acts And Restoring Lives by Dan Korem for the home-grown “postal” or “Columbine” counter-part to the more altruistically-motivate terrorists.

Our own summary of terrorism, which is threat number nine out of ten identified by the High-Level Threat Panel of the United Nations, reads as follows:

“The ‘war on terror' must fail because it is a self-defeating slogan. To make war on a tactic — a raid, a breakout, an asymmetric attack on civilians, the use of chemical weapons — makes no sense. These tactics have worked well throughout history and will continue to. `Terrorist” tactics were used by Americans against the British in the 1770's, by the Israelis against the British, by Algerians against the French. Progress is only possible if the problem is clearly defined … as global militant Islam. It may be political correctness that prevents that definition, or it may be that there is a genuine misunderstanding of the problem. Once confronted, the origins of global militant Islam are largely well-defined and, with sufficient cooperation by a range of nations, is a relatively simple problem to treat.”

The author could not have written a more compelling indictment of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice. They are impeachable, by this account, for blunders of global magnitude, great expense, and if not impeachable incompetence, then impeachable dereliction of duty in placing energy and financial interests above the public interest. Dick Cheney set the policy process aside (see my reviews of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill and The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11) and this set the stage for Paul Bremmer to become the most grotesquely stupid and arrogant pro-consul in the history of mankind (see my reviews of “Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq and Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq).

The notes and bibliography reflect scholarship of the highest order, and the book itself demonstrates both the author's personal experience with terrorism, and the author's intellect in studying terrorism over a lifetime. The index is better than average.

It is with a sense of sadness that I put this book down. General Al Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, published “Global Intelligence Challenges of the 1990's” in the American Intelligence Journal (Winter 1989-1990), in which he clearly called for draconian increases in Third World intelligence, specifically focused on revolutionary and terrorist actors, making the most of open sources of information in all languages. The secret mandarins refused to listen. We have wasted 18 years during which we could have re-invented national intelligence and gotten it right, from 1988, when I first started demanding greater respect for open sources, the same year that Bin Laden kicked off a global campaign to spread radical military Islam, a campaign funded by the Saudi Arabian government that has bought and owns the Bush Family.

To end on a positive note, I cannot imagine our inert disengaged public awakening from its coma, in the absence of high crimes and misdemeanors such as we have witnessed under these six years of agonizingly ignorant and indeed treasonous governance. Sometimes the pain is necessary. This would appear to be such a time.

EDIT of 10 Dec 07: 100 million American voters who opted out of partisan politics are rearing their heads. Books like Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency have certainly helped.

2006/07/082009/12/04

Review: With All Our Might–A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty (Paperback)

4 Star, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Terrorism & Jihad, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Super on Law and Accountability, Read with “The Transparent Society”,

July 8, 2006

Daniel Solove

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Super on Law and Accountability, Read with “The Transparent Society”, July 8, 2006

There are some great reviews below, so I will not repeat them. Amazon is getting to the point now where it is almost essential to read all of the reviews as a pre-cursor to buying and reading the book.

This book was instrumental, after I bought it, in pointing me to the preceding work by David Brin, “The Transparent Society,” and I found it useful to read that book first.

The two key points in this book that make it a notable contribution are:

1. Best available review of applicable laws; and

2. Superb expansive discussion of privacy violation that emerge not just for deliberate abuse and invasion, but from “careless unconcerned bureaucracies” with little judgement or accountability.

IDEA for Amazon: connect with the Institute of Scientific Information, and start showing us new books that cite existing books. I would love to be able to “fast forward” from this book to the “best in class” books that cite this book so that I could buy the best most recent book (I buy and read in threes on most topics). Amazon has become a major intellectual force, and is my starting point for every issue (Google is for fast looks, Amazon is for deep looks; I hope that one day they merge with Wikipedia).