O Holy Crap: There's a new book at the top of my reading list

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14202-2004Jun3.html

Top Guns

A critic of Washington's intelligence world turns his sights on the Iraq invasion.

Reviewed by Douglas Farah
Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page BW03

A PRETEXT FOR WAR

9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
By James Bamford

Doubleday. 420 pp. $26.95

As debate continues to rage about the flaws in the American occupation of Iraq, James Bamford takes a fresh look at the run-up to the 2003 conflict, to examine how pre-war intelligence spurred the onset of war. Bamford, author of two earlier investigative studies of the National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets, sets out in A Pretext for War to show that key figures in the Bush administration -- national security adviser Richard Perle, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith -- locked in a plan to wage war in Iraq well before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He charges that these four leading hawks manipulated the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency in a desperate attempt to justify a regime change in Iraq that they had been strategizing to bring about for years. He suggests further that the administration's rush to war grew out of a key and chronic blind spot in American policy circles: the failure to recognize the central role of the Palestinian cause in igniting Arab rage against the United States.

Bamford makes this case largely in the last third of his book. He uses the first two-thirds to meticulously lay out how the Sept. 11 aircraft were hijacked, the numerous intelligence and logistical failures that led to al Qaeda's successful strike and the reaction to the attacks in official Washington. Highly readable and well-researched, this account offers new insights into how the Sept. 11 hijackings occurred, while also showing how terribly ill-equipped and unprepared our defense systems were to deal with these kinds of attacks.

Other writers have also chronicled the overall failures and some of the panic, but Bamford found much new information that underscores just how chaotic and dangerous things really were in Sept. 11's immediate aftermath. For example, Bamford notes that two Air National Guard jets were scramble-ready and perhaps could have intercepted at least one of the suicide airliners, yet were assigned that day to unarmed bomb practice. Even if they had scrambled earlier, however, the fighter jets had no weapons to shoot down the hijacked jets. In fact, Bamford says, "on September 11, 2001, the entire United States mainland was protected by just fourteen planes spread out over seven bases."

...more...

[AP]

1. Can I interest you in The Roaring Ninenties?

You know, something about economics.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

2. But why does Bamford always have to do in 420 pages what others

do in 200?

Just kidding...the guy's a great writer..gets LOTS of inside information and there's no doubt he'll take a different slice at this one...read Body of Secrets and was glued to it....as long as I don't have to sit through flowery descriptions about what kind of suits they were all wearing...as authors go...he's kind of the Calvin Klein of the Beltway. :D

[squidbro]

3. Available at Amazon

I just went and ordered the book. It was $18.33 at Amazon.

[RBHam]

4. Bamford also wrote "Body Of Secrets"

Where he exposed "Operation Northwoods" an earlier 9-11 style proposal by the Joint Chiefs in the 60's. I've wroitten ad nauseam about it before...

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/bamford/home.html

[WilliamPitt]

5. Bingo

[mistertrickster]

6. Sounds interesting--I'm halfway through "What's The Matter With Kansas?"

Thomas Frank's latest of how the radical right managed to get millions of working class former Democrats to vote against their economic interests.

http://www.ljworld.com/section/citynews/story/168410

"Frank answers the question by blaming the "Great Backlash," a post-1980s form of conservatism that uses hot-button issues such as abortion, gun control and un-Christian art to elect candidates who, once they're in office, blindly serve the interests of big business. And big business, Frank argues, is no friend of the family farmer, the Garden City meatpacker or the Wichita aircraft worker.

"The trick never ages, the illusion never wears off," Frank wrote. "Vote to stop abortion, receive a rollback in capital-gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization efforts. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs rewarded in a manner beyond imagining."

**************

Worth taking a look at. Very entertainingly written.

My only quibble is that he doesn't dig into the white, males' rage at the loss of their traditional central roles in society, and how the neo-cons have appropriated that anger by blaming feminism, multiculturalism, elitism, instead of the real culprits--corporatism that has no law except profit and unlimited wealth for those at the top.

[radfringe]

7. I had just finished

Wilson's book, tried to start reading Woodward's book, but had to set it aside (for the moment) to avoid having a full blown and out of control tirade.

and now you want me to read another one????!!!

I had given a co-worker Paul O'Neill's book, and Richard Clarke's book to read a couple of months ago. He apologized the other day for taking soo long with the books and said he could only read a couple of chapters at a time lest he starts ranting/raving and stomping around the house. His wife is also reading them and has the same reaction.

I offered to lend him Wilson's book -- he declined for now citing that his doctor is concerned with his blood pressure

meanwhile, I've added Bamford's book to my list.....

[WilliamPitt]

8. ...must...keep...reading...