A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies Paperback – May 10, 2005

Those who critcize this book for what it is not - more conspiracy theory, are making a HUGE mistake by failing to appreciate it for what it is - a powerful indictment of W without using a single fact that can be disputed. Was I disappointed at times? Yes. I bought this book because of Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace," which to me was a much better book. I give this book a five star for the powerful indictment of W that it is and partially to counteract the idiots who cannot embrace something that supports their cause because it does not fit their version of reality. Believing 9-11 was a US Government conspiracy is one thing. Evaluating useful material based on that belief (and there is NO proof, just a lot of coincidence that may or may not support the conspiracy theories) is a LOST cause.

As always James Bamford's efforts are thoroughly researched and engagingly written. This book is still timely. History repeatedly demonstrates that once a tiger has been taken by the tail, the hold on the tail is passed from one administration to its successor. Interesting that as I read this book for a second time, the scandal of NSA illegal eavesdropping should surface again. Bamford's "Puzzle Palace", "Body of Secrets", and "Shadow Factory" are worthy of a second visit, (or first, if that be the case).

A good book. Well written and contains plenty of material related to intelligence that tends to hold my interest. I appreciate Mr Bamford's work and have read several of his other books over the years.

i found it a good read although "Hubris" was even better with citations that were valuable,

Bamford's work is always masterful and clear! TWS

This is a great read.

This book must be read in conjunction with many others such as Halper and Clarke's more scholarly study of the same topic entitled "America Alone" as well as Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire" and the less important books by Richard Clarke, John Dean, Paul O'Neill, Kevin Philips, etc.

While Halper and Clarke place the topic of going to war into an historical scholarly framework, Bamford, a journalist, gives us a contemporary account of the major events in the formation of Al Qaeda and the activities in the intelligence services leading to the war against Iraq.

This historian, before all of these books were published, had already spent many hours researching and reading domestic and foreign assessments of Bush's maneuvering to divert the war against terrorism into a war against Saddam Hussein.

The American Enterprise Institute's Project for a New American Century was a good start and led to more clues and into the right directions. (Even the creation in 2000 of the CETO, Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, a Marine Corps think tank, gives clues, in various articles and studies, to the torture policies).

The foreign media outmatched ours by far in getting the story right. Now we have lots of books that corroborate and clarify the issue even more and hold those accountable who caused an enormous burden for America's workers, taxpayers and armed forces.

Bamford is particularly good at exposing Bush's abuse of intelligence information and both he and Halper and Clarke agree on the crucial and irresponsible manipulation of the "Clean Break" proposals of getting rid of Saddam which had been commissioned in Israel and submitted to Netanyahu, who rejected it, and Bush who enacted it. It envisioned a complete rearrangement of the Mideast with the U.S. acting as a modern Rome. It is incontestably true that David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, Abram Shulksy, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle et al. were maneuvering a compliant Bush to attack Iraq. There is no doubt that they wanted the U.S. to serve Israel's interest. Feith's Office of Special Plans, created by Rumsfeld in 2000 to crank out justification for an attack on Iraq, fed phony and concocted info to the Pentagon and apprised the American-Israeli Public Action Committe (AIPAC) which presumably forwarded it to Israel. The recent disclosure of this spy story, coming after Bamford's book, supports the author's position.

Interestingly enough, Feith's Office of Special Plans has already been disbanded and Feith, so far, is cooperating in the Investigation, which is likely to be forgotten and covered up just like the Israeli attack on the U.S. naval vessel the "Liberty" in l967, which killed some 36 sailors, was covered up and forgotten.

This spy story also invalidates much of the criticism some reviewers have of his book.

Bamford is excellent on intelligence activities and the tracing of Al Qaeda's tranformation of being an ally of the U.S. into an enemy. This happened in l996, in reaction to Israel's massacre of hundreds of innocent civilians in southern Lebanon, the so-called Qana massacre, which was widely broadcast in Moslem and European countries but totally neglected here. As Senior CIA officials, charged with analyzing the causes of 9-ll would say later on, the Israeli-Palestinain conflict is "central" to the causes, though not the only one.

For those interesting in historical synthesizing here is a thought--Bush, Sr., presumably, ordered Saddam to be assassinated in 1991. Saddam may have planned to assassinate Bush, Sr. in Kuwait in '93 and, therefore Bush, Jr., got to Saddam in '03. It sort of recalls what LBJ told a reporter, who asked him what he thought of the Kennedy assassination. LBJ said "let me tell you something,son, Kennedy tried to get at Castro, but Castro got to Kennedy first." While this may be only LBJ's opinion, there may be parallels in Kennedy-Castro, Bush-Saddam connections.

Thanks!