Author: Richard A. Clarke File Type: epub THE EXPLOSIVE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERWith all-new excerpts from Richard Clarkes dramatic public testimony, and revealing corroboration from The 911 Commission Report From the 911 Commission ReportOn the day of the meeting [September 4, 2001], Clarke sent Rice an impassioned personal note. He criticized U.S. counterterrorism efforts past and present. The real question before the principals, he wrote, was are we serious about dealing with the al Qida threat?...Is al Qida a big deal?...Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the CSG has not succeeded in stopping al Qida attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the US, Clarke wrote. What would those decision makers wish that they had done earlier? That future day could happen at any time.Amazon.com ReviewFew political memoirs have made such a dramatic entrance as that by Richard A. Clarke. During the week of the initial publication of Against All Enemies, Clarke was featured on 60 Minutes, testified before the 911 commission, and touched off a raging controversy over how the presidential administration handled the threat of terrorism and the post-911 geopolitical landscape. Clarke, a veteran Washington insider who had advised presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, dissects each mans approach to terrorism but levels the harshest criticism at the latter Bush and his advisors who, Clarke asserts, failed to take terrorism and Al-Qaeda seriously. Clarke details how, in light of mounting intelligence of the danger Al-Qaeda presented, his urgent requests to move terrorism up the list of priorities in the early days of the administration were met with apathy and procrastination and how, after the attacks took place, Bush and key figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney turned their attention almost immediately to Iraq, a nation not involved in the attacks. Against All Enemies takes the reader inside the Beltway beginning with the Reagan administration, who failed to retaliate against the 1982 Beirut bombings, fueling the perception around the world that the United States was vulnerable to such attacks. Terrorism becomes a growing but largely ignored threat under the first President Bush, whom Clarke cites for his failure to eliminate Saddam Hussein, thereby necessitating a continued American presence in Saudi Arabia that further inflamed anti-American sentiment. Clinton, according to Clarke, understood the gravity of the situation and became increasingly obsessed with stopping Al-Qaeda. He had developed workable plans but was hamstrung by political infighting and the sex scandal that led to his impeachment. But Bush and his advisers, Clarke says, didnt get it before 911 and they didnt get it after, taking a unilateral approach that seemed destined to lead to more attacks on Americans and American interests around the world. Clarkes inside accounts of what happens in the corridors of power are fascinating and the book, written in a compelling, highly readable style, at times almost seems like a fiction thriller. But the threat of terrorism and the consequences of Bushs approach to it feel very sobering and very real. --John MoeFrom Publishers WeeklyFrom the first thrilling chapter, which takes readers into the White House center of operations on September 11, through his final negative assessment of George W. Bushs post-911 war on terror, Clarke, the U.S.s former terrorism czar, offers a complex and illuminating look into the successes and failures of the nations security apparatus. He offers charged (and, one must note, for himself triumphant) insider scenes, such as when he scared the devil out of Clintons Cabinet to motivate them to fight terrorism. The media has understandably focused on Clarkes charge that Bush neglected terrorism before the attacks on New York and Washington but Clarke also offers a longer perspective on the issue, going back to the first Gulf War (when he was an assistant secretary of state) and makes some stunning revelations. One of the latter is that the U.S. came close to war with Iran over that countrys role in the terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. An important aspect of Clarkes book is that it is only one mans accountand an account moreover that casts its author as hero and others (FBI, CIA, the military) as screw-ups as has been seen in recent congressional hearings, administration officials (notably, Condoleezza Rice) have challenged its veracity. But those inclined to believe Clarke will find that he makes a devastating case about the Bush administrations failure from the beginning (when Clarkes position was downgraded and he was taken off the top-level Principals Committee) to make terrorism as high a priority as Clintons did. In the face of the Bush teams claim that they didnt know about a threat to the homeland, readers will be haunted by two small words after mobilizing to confront the Millennium terror threat, Clarke reached what seemed to him the obvious conclusion regarding al-Qaeda Theyre here. Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Author: Barry Gifford File Type: epub Do the Blind Dream? shows Gifford at the height of his powers, navigating with ease the new, more fragmented imaginative landscape of morning-after America. Gifford seems to have anticipated themes that suddenly are recognizable everywhere the fragility of identity the power of coincidence the illusion of a secure tomorrow. In contrast to his often nightmarish, satirical, groundbreaking novels of the 1990sWild at Heart, Perdita Durango, and Night People among themDo the Blind Dream? continues in the tender and deeply introspective vein revealed in two recent works Giffords memoir The Phantom Father (named a New York Times Notable Book), and the award-winning novella Wyoming. From the intimate, stylistically daring examination of the darkest secrets in the history of an Italian family, to the terrible but often beautiful fears and discoveries of childhood, to the sardonic, desperate confusion of adult life, Do the Blind Dream? reveals an exceptionally versatile, highly tuned sensibility. From the Hardcover edition.**