Everyone please READ Clarke's book

None of these media clowns or Bush surrogates have read the book--they've only read the pre-pub excerpts. The book is wonderful; and not quite what the press would suggest.

It's a quick read concise history of the US government and terrorism since 1979 ending with a blistering critique of the Iraq war.

Even though it's written in that hideous "Christmas letter from Tom Clancy" style that afflicts all these books this is COMPELLING reading. The opening moment-by-moment 9/11 narrative is incredibly gripping stuff.

I believe it... it's one man's perspective, but the book has credibility.

two striking things:

1) It actually made me think better of some players. Cheney is an impressive guy. No surprise there. The shocker is that Bush seems to been a far more dynamic character on 9/11 than I would have believed possible. (Clarke clearly despises Bush, so I accept his flat recounting of events) Bush was so scared looking on TV that day that it's hard to imagine him taking control of the situation, but it seems he did. Not FDR but not a total weakling or idiot--he shows characteristics of real leadership. Unfortunately he lacks the background and intellectual curiosity to lead in the right direction but Bush did at least have the gut instinct to eventually side short-term with Powell and Clarke and Tenet against Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. He was afraid to fail so he went with the folks that sounded sanest. Over time that changed--a few months of 90% approval ratings and chats with God encourage hubris.

2) Reading Clarke's account of 9/11 drains the life from all the conspiracy theories--LIHOP and MIHOP and the missile pod and switched planes... everything. It's remarkable getting an inside view of 9/11 that's not overt propaganda. (It's propaganda for Clarke, but hey, it's his book. He does come off awfully well, though)

Anyway, it's a better book than I expected and much richer than TV commentary would lead one to believe.

Perhaps I will log off and pick it up after I have cruised through the threads for a minute or two. Thanks for the review.

Thanks for sharing your insights.


Cher

I am still reading the book about Paul O'Neil. Everytime I start it just get frustrated with the * Administration and have to put it back down. I want to read the Clarke book but, I know that I will probably have the same problem getting through it. Frustration with the guys hired to run the government.

It is in the right city per shipment tracking.

just waiting for it to arrive

"drains the life from all the conspiracy theories--LIHOP and MIHOP "

I think Clarke knows what really happened to Flight 93, and IMHO he knows it was shot down.

I am only 1/2 way through the book, but a number of things about Flight 93 stands out.

1) The shoot down order for any passenger planes had been given and Clarke was one of the biggest pushers of that order from the book.

2) He talks about fighters in the area of Flight 93.

3) And of all the passengers and people killed that day, Clark dedicated the book to John O'Neill (a friend) and "the
extraordinarily brave passengers on United flight 93"

My reading is yes the passengers on 93 tried to take over the plane, but not knowing what was happening on the plane, a fighter took it out.

I could be very very wrong, but I feel Clarke feels some guilt to what happened to United 93.

I meant to mention this in my original message; I am, so far, willing to entertain the possibility that flight 93 was shot down... I don't think it was, but the case is still wide open, given what we know so far.

That suspicion isn't quite a conspiracy theory since it would have involved doing something right, then covering it up out of confusion. It would suck to shoot down a plane and then find out the passengers were trying to retake the plane at the time!

The Clarke book is truly one man's story so it's not an overall picture. There's nothing in there about the Norm Minetta-Dick Cheney shoot-down order scene, for instance, because Clarke wasn't there at that moment.

I agree, Flight 93 may have been shot down & that shoot down is one of the things they are covering up. However, if it was shot down it lends no credence whatsoever to LIHOP or MIHOP.

There is plenty of other evidence to suggest LIHOP, however.

I think gratitude may be the main reason for his dedication. Clarke was in the WH situation room, not the bunker. He and his team would not have survived a hit from flight 93.

93 was probably bound for the capitol because a short squat building like the WH surrounded by taller buildings is an almost impossible shot but the capitol practically has a landing strip leading to it (the Mall). That said, the people in the situation room weren't nuts to feel targeted by 93 watching its progress.

There's some interesting ambiguity in the book about Cheney. Clarke is amazed how fast the WH people were able to get orders up and down the chain of command. I don't know if he was suggesting that Cheney had short-circuited the Chain or was just plain impressed.

If Cheney cut Bush out of the loop it's troubling, but not anything I wouldn't have done under the circumstances given Bush's experience level. The real heroes of 9/11 are people who were willing to act outside the framework of proper authority, and that's a troubling precedent. The FAA guy that grounded all the planes had no authorization. The naval vessels headed to New York had no authorization. If Cheney ordered shoot-downs perhaps he was outside his authority and subsequently back-filled by having the president confirm Cheney's order after the fact.

I applaud all of those actions under the circumstances but it's frightening to contemplate that he rules apply least at precisely those moments that are most perilous.

I am some type of book nut and go to library weekly so I will not endlessly buy books. With the PC I may have out smarted my self. So far I have only gone to my weakness once.

and also A New Pearl Harbor, which the 9-11 families group mentioned yesterday as one some of them were reading.

you can read about the book on Amazon.

He wanted to go ahead and take out Saddam at that time.

One reason Clarke's book/interviews are so devastating is that he cannot be accused of being an "appeaser" by the Bush administration.

In other words, Clarke is a hawk.

The first chapter is riveting. This is the only thing I have read from inside the white house.

1. Louis Freeh is a moron.

2. Pentagon bigwigs were weenies when it came to "snatching" overseas criminals. When bringing terrorists to justice, one method was to send Delta Force (or other U.S. authorities) into foreign countries and essentially kidnap the criminal to bring him back to the U.S. to justice. Clarke asserts that Clinton approved EVERY PROPOSED SNATCHING. It was the CIA or the Pentagon that wimped out saying "they just couldn't manage it."

BUT the kicker is, the Pentagon then let the rumors spread that Clinton was the one who'd decided against the snatchings. They were spreading lies to make themselves look like the bold dudes and blaming Clinton for being a wimp. And the military guys down the line were buying it, and spreading rumors that Clinton was the problem.

The military anti-Clinton culture was scary. See also Clarke on the military's efforts to pin Somalia on Clinton who had only been in office for one month at the time.

One month seems to be less than "240 days", but what do I know? Did C. Rice have a focus group to see if "240 days" sounds like less than "eight months?"

Clarke doesn't come off as purely partisan but he is feisty and a touch vindictive. Check out his gratuitous assertion that Freeh was an "opus dei" sect member.

Did I miss something?

Also, I don't know what claims Clarke has made about Freeh, but a Google search will show you that Freeh has been linked to Opus Dei. I don't know if he is a member or not, but I believe he sent his kids to an Opus-backed school. So I'm not sure it would be a "gratuitous assertion" to say Freeh is Opus. And if he is, it's not a good thing, IMO.

I don't need Clarke to convince me that Bush is a disaster so I was reading with an eye to wards how it reads to people on the fence.

The opus dei assertion is stuck into a hypothetical. He was trying to explain Saudi sympathy to Wahabi extremism-- he talks about how we would react if the Saudis urged a crackdown on Opus Dei; that since all Christians agree with 95% of the sect's views it wouldn't seem as extreme in a 30% catholic country as it seems to outsiders and/or non-Christians.

He parenthetically says that Freeh might be opus dei and it sticks out as not advancing the argument being made, and thus reads as a shot for the sake of taking a shot.

One can talk about Prescott Bush and the Nazis as an independent topic, but it would look weird in an essay about music to say, "Nazis (who some say Prescott Bush was friendly with) really liked Wagner."


It doesn't bother me any--I'm down on religion across the board--but it's one of many touches that made me wince in the book because it could allow people on the fence to dismiss it as vindictive.


The Lynne Cheney crack, dismissing her as a right-wing ideologue, was similar. I loathe Lynne C. but her being a right-wing nut wasn't relevant to the point being made, that she was fucking up the program in the bunker and being a nuisance. Many left wing ideologues are also self-important nuisances, so the comment seemed misplaced to me--just Clarke letting it be known that he dislikes her.

I found this section hilarious. Clinton had ordered a missile strike on Iraqi Intelligence Headquarters. The missiles were launched, but the US could not get satellite confirmation that the strike was successful. Clinton was imminently to go on live TV to announce it, but he had no proof that the missiles had actually struck their target. The CIA and military couldn't tell him a thing.

So what did Clinton do?

He called CNN! CNN had a cameraman in their Jordan bureau who had a relative living near the intelligence HQ, so they called this cousin of the cameraman who said, yeah, the whole place just blew up.

So Clinton went on TV with the news, after calling the relative of a CNN camera man. That was his intelligence source!

Al Gore comes off looking really, really smart and take-charge in this book, by the way...

My local bookstore was out of them and I did'nt want to drive 45 miles to Walden. Should be good ammo to fight the lies from Bush.

Page: 18

Major Fenzel whispered, 'but I can't hear the crisis conference because Mrs. Cheney keeps turning down the volume on you so she can hear CNN.. and the Vice President keeps hanging up the open line to you." Mrs. Cheney was more than just a family member who had to be protected. Like her husband, she was a right-wing ideologue and she was offering her advice and opinions in the bunker.

That's winger "logic."

hope they're quick on the uptake.

fault that it came out now....the rules is hat anyone who has had access to national security secerts MUST have any books written vetted by the WH before it can be published or sold...bush held up Clarkes book for 5 months

what f***ing BULLSHIT. Would this be before or AFTER he sat in a f***ing classromm reading a KIDDIE STORY while ALL HELL WAS BREAKING LOOSE ???????????????????????????????????????

If you prefer fighting a caricature of Bush feel free to do so but I stand by my statement. He's a dishonest moron but he had decisions to make in a pressured situation and he picked some of the better available options and was able to impose his judgments on people like Cheney and Rumsfeld with 10 times more smarts and experience.

I am more impressed seeing leadership from a moron than from someone smart because with the moron you know you're looking at an isolated intangible.

I expect Bush to lose this election because for the first time in his life he won't be underestimated.

Bush's short term response to 9/11 was--in fact--impressive. Gore's response would have been better. Clinton's better still.(IMO)

his "performance" has been an absolute DISGRACE - there was NOTHING "impressive" about it. And living in Texas, I have had to put up with this lying piece of shit for TEN YEARS. If Bush LOSES AGAIN it will be because people finally understand what a g.d. FRAUD he is. His inactions and dereliction of duty help bring about the events of 9/11. A TREASONOUS BASTARD is what he is.

pipe lines? And John O'Neill?

O'Neill's name had been proposed by Richard Clarke as Clarke's successor as terrorism czar at the National Security Council. But a very mysterious incident that had happened nearly a year before was dredged up and used to blow that possibility out of the water. In November of 2000, at a retirement seminar in Tampa, O'Neill left his briefcase for a few moments in the convention room to go around the corner to use the phone. When he returned in a few minutes, the brief case, containing some papers considered classified, was gone. It soon turned up, but the incident was seized upon as an excuse to guarantee O'Neill would not get promoted. Was it a real theft? Or a set up to squeeze out the man who asked too many questions about Saudis and oil? O'Neill had finally had enough and quit.

how do you come to this conclusion? he's an evil man. period.

I despise Cheney but he's a capable man. Reducing things to good vs. evil seems to me to be the current problem, not part of the solution.

Not that they knew what was going to happen or when, just that certain high-up individuals knew something was bound to happen and just kind of backed off the issue for a while - knowing it would help them get into Iraq - does the book leave this open as a credible theory?

Clarke's thinking is they were not LIHOP because they really didn't believe anything would happen. As he says, they really believed their campaign talking points. Every Clinton says is wrong. Clinton is very concerned about Bin Lade. Thus Bin Laden is not a threat. QED.

How could they not consider AQ the preeminent threat to America? After the bombings in Africa, on the Cole, etc. I mean what the hell were they thinking?

It's so nonsensical sometimes I think Clarke is either afraid to assert a possible deeper truth, or else they just straight-up misled him.