Customer Reviews

Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

Holy Smokes you would think that this book would be getting lots more press due to the sheer explosive content. Its almost like no one wants to address the facts this book raise. Why not? Is the conventional wisdom so sure of itself about Iraq's involvement in terrorist attacks against this country? I dont see any conservative websites covering this book, no libetarian sites covering this book, no liberal websites (well ok that would destroy their attacks on the President so I understand) but sheesh. Are we in an alternate universe? James Woolsey, Richard Perle and others write high praise of the book, its released and then drops off the scope? It doesnt deserve this anonymity, it deserves to be debated and talked about on the news and either debunked, unlikely, or a major fuss made about the type of Bureaucratic bungling outlined in the book.

This book isnt written by some tinfoil beenie cap wearing nutcase but the expert that President Clinton called on during his campaign to advise him on Iraq, she has taught at Harvard and the Navy War College....she needs to be listened to and debated. Buy this book and you will see why. Its obvious from her passion on the subject that she is driven to make herself heard and to help her country avoid another 9/11.

Pierre

Laurie Mylroie worked for Bill Clinton as an Iraq adivsor during his 92 campaign so Republicans can rejoice that a former agent of the left brings forth evidence that not only vindicates the necessity to bring down the Saddam regime because of what the rest of the world, and indeed the UN security council, knew to be direct ties to terrorists, which include Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden, but also shows the remnants of State Department and CIA bureaucratic conformity to 8 years of Clinton foreign policy and beyond that its employees refused to shed and endangered the US. This is compounded by evidence of "Annonymous Sources" going out and trying to discredit reports and press releases that were properly vetted by their superiors.

The final chapter, guest authored by Professor Robert Turner (cofounder of Center for National Security Law, professor of International Law at the naval war college, and former chair of the American Bar Association's Standing committee on Law and National Security) even offers explicit proof that the claims that Iraqi freedom was an Illegal engagement are groundless and in fact was probably more legal then engagements in Bosnia and most other military conflicts in the last half century. He even offers an endictment of the UN for fail to meet its Charter responsibility of using prevention to address aggression and human rights violations rather than responding to them after the fact.

In the end, this book shows a frightening connection between Iraq and Terrorists that was overlooked and even dismissed in the face of overwhelming evidence from around the globe. Some of this evidence dates back to 1993 from the chief FBI investegator of the first World Trade Center bombing.

This book will get your brain rolling. Sad, it is, how institutional propriety is more valued than national security. If you still think Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism, then open your mind and read this. If you can honestly admit that something that smells like fish, looks like a fish, and swims like a fish, that it is indeed a fish, then you will conclude that Bush did what needed to be done. If you are one who always, in spite of the facts, screams that there "Isn't enough proof," then forget this book and return to your Noam Chomsky collection.

And, the chapter outlining the legality of war on Iraq was a great addition to the book.

Chapter Seven is the crucible brief which Ms. Mylroie lays out for those of us who maintain an open mind on state sponsored terrorism by Iraq. It becomes understandable in these Byzantine times how and why a terrorist state such as Iraq would and could create a double blind strategy using willing mercenaries most likely from that terrorist cauldron of Baluchastan with "legends" created during the Kuwaiti occupation; who could wreak havoc on a lulled America preoccupied with limp wristed political leadership - and to have the finger of blame pointed at vacuous Saudi identities of the perpetrators to achieve the dual purpose of wrecking the U.S. economy and imploding the Saudi Kingdom;
brilliantly removing "the scales from the eyes" revelations.
bob hardy, vergennes, vt

Mylroie is obviously an intelligent woman, but in instance after instance her reasoning REEKS of a deeply warped, ideologically-rooted manipulation of reality. No surprise at all that this book has been ignored by all but those who lobbied for the 2003 Iraq War. I can't help but wonder if the author worked with Wolfowitz and Feith in the Office of Special Plans? Don't waste yout time with this book, unless you are into sci-fi or feel the need to see how delusionally some allegedly legit authors can be. An education in published media farcicalness.

Laurie Milroie writes a very convincing book on the truth behind the conflict between the CIA and the White House. This is a very insightful book on what goes on behind the scenes in Washington. The CIA and the State Dept had evidence of the complicity between Al Queada and Saddam Hussien. Laurie clearly details why the itelligence was not and is not still the Public knowledge norm for the war in Iraq. It seems clear that the CIA to avoid embarrasment and for fear of losing power inside of Washington is continously discrediting such information to this day. Not only did the CIA endanger our national security before 9/11 it is till doing so in a power struugle in our intelligence community today. Laurie also detail meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Muhammed Atta in the Chec Repuclic before the 9/11 attacks. The Checks still very much say this meeting took place. Yet this report is discredited by anoynomous leaks coming from sources inside the CIA. Also very important links show how Iraqi intelligence altered records of terrorists in Kuwati intelligence files during their occupation of Kuwait during the first Gulf War. There same terrorists are the very ones behind attacks on the USS Cole, The First World Trade Center Bombing, The Sept 11 attacks. Laurie also sheds light on Saddams revenge tactics on Egypt for participation in the first Gulf War. Saddam was complicit in a major terrorist attack on the tourists at Luxor in 1997. Saddam and his regimes evil is very much a subject of Ms Mylroies book which makes the most important humanitarian reason for the war in Iraq. Saddam was funneling money from the oil for food program and using it for his own weapons programs and funding of terrorist camps inside of Iraq. Which the main stream media refuses to admit Al Queada members trained in to hijack airplanes. All this while his people starved. Or if you openly dissented you where killed or tortured, or your family was tortured in front of you. And the U.N. and the world community did nothing. Read this book. You will learn alot of the inner workings inside the beltway. And Praise G.W. Bush for fighting a just war in Iraq. Thank You Laurie Mylroie

I thought this was a really good book. It is the second book by this author that I have read since 9/11. Much of what she has discovered and shares in her books she gathered from the public record, especially the trial of the first World Trade Center bombing. This book is timely, especially with the problems in our intelligence agencies. The author tried to share information with the spies, but they aren't interested unless they discover it themselves. And many times they don't even know what is available already in the public record. The book also reveals how the lifetime employees of the CIA and State Department often promote their own self interests over those of the U.S. Scary. Most revealing is the relationship between Iraq and Saddam and 9/11. I fully believe that Saddam was involved. Book also reveals that many of the worst bad guys may be from a very small part area of the world. Revealing book, which I highly recommend.

Where did the lies of the Bush administration to justify launching a war against Iraq come from? They were the result of their own lunacy, of course, but they also came from books of neocon disinformation like this one.

Now that the truth is out and that everybody knows that the neocon push to attack Iraq was a plot from day one, reading such a book throws a glaring light on the extent to which the pro-Israel conspiracy went towards engaging the United States militarily against Iraq, against international law and against world opinion, and, I may add, against the U.S. Constitution.

George W. Bush himself said on Sept. 17, 2003 that "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks", even though he and Cheney kept linking the two in their own propaganda. It was all part of a strategy of disinformation and of psychological warfare to persuade Congress and the American people that Iraq must be invaded and occupied.

But now the record is clear and the evidence is overwhelming that the Bush administration's case for war was a fabrication. The Downing Street official Memos are all there to see that the Bush administration made a policy of war, then altered, twisted and distorted the facts to fit that policy.

Future historians will investigate books of this kind to understand how so much duplicity was possible and was tolerated in a large democratic country such as the United States. Who were the active collaborators in this historical hoax perpetrated on the American people? Obviously, the author of this war tract was one of them.

I'd give this book six stars if I could. Fantastic summary of the evidence that Saddam's Iraq underwrote the 9/11 attacks and was ready to attack again. Despite the somewhat lurid subtitle, it also deals responsibly with the disturbing conclusion that the U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence establishment (CIA, FBI, State Department) utterly failed in their task of protecting America from its enemies. Buy this book if you have an open mind and want to better understand why the liberation of Iraq was absolutely necessary for America's national security. If it weren't for Laurie Mylroie, there wouldn't be anyone else doing the hard investigative work and pulling all the strands together for the non-specialist reader.

...on their own petard.

If you lie long enough and loud enough and thoroughly enough, sooner or later you will find yourself in the position Laurie Mylroie's Bush administration sources find themselves: caught in their own web.

Mylroie's protagonists (whom she portrays as "heroes" for standing up to the CIA when they said there might not be much threat from Iraq) are now desperately trying to blame the CIA for their missteps. Their problem: Mylroie has documented their earlier attempts to spin in the other direction in this book, which argues they didn't accept overwhelming evidence Iraq had WMD and ties to 9/11.

Now that the evidence is really in we know Mylroie, Bush and their fellow-travellers were wrong. The CIA was right. The State Department was right. And the snivelling cowards are trying to blame those who tried to help them get it right in the first place.

Fortunately we have books like this to document their veniality.

Borrow this book from your local library to give you ammunition to fight the good fight. Try not to spend money on it that would go into the pockets of this pseudo-patriot who would line her coffers by selling out the true patriots who fight for their country with truth instead of lies.