Richard Clarke was and still is a valuable public servant and his book Against All Enemies is very educational and informative on how the US tried (and often failed) to combat terrorism/al Qaeda; it comes from someone who was actually in The Situation Room during national crises. Wolf Blitzer, eat your heart out.

I enjoyed this book by Richard Clarke. The information provided was good and it helped me see the way our administrations, right or wrong, try to conduct their business to protect America. I was very surprise to realize how POLITICAL TURF BATTLES get in the way and in some cases at the expense of American lives.

"Against All Enemies" has them all. Former NSA security advisor, Richard Clarke, manages to encompass almost every episode of White House security policy since the start of his career of working with our Presidents since 1985. In Chapter One, Clarke opens the book with a firsthand account inside the White House on September 11th. This is the beginning of the Good, the start of the finer part of Clarke's literateness. With detailed accuracy, we assume, he describes the events in the situation room in the White House on as word is just coming in of a terrorist attack. It is a rather dramatic and interesting to see what took place from where the average US citizen wasn't able to witness.

For the next 9 chapters Mr. Clarke writes about his role in the US Government from a first person view, from the beginnings of his career in the Reagan administration to the end in the Bush administration. The first nine provide inside information to the reader about the US's handling of national security. It is also the basis for why a prospectus reader would pick up this book in the first place. The subtitle last time I checked is "Inside America's War on Terror" and not "Inside Clarke's thoughts on why America's executive office is always a failure". Although after reading it, one might believe that was his original title idea. We are fortunate enough that Clarke chose to bestow upon a reader at least two chapters without infecting it with his own blatantly obvious partisan views. Which include Chapter 1; "Evacuate the White House" and Chapter 9; "Millennium Alert". However the rest of the Chapters between one and nine are bearable for the most part compared to the just plain ugly in Chapter Ten and Eleven where the book morphs into "Against All GOP Enemies". Needless to say the theme has been flowing throughout the entire book, but the ugly part of the book (Chapters 10-11), it is just blatant and glaring to everyone. When you near Chapter Ten, so begins the politicizing of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The first nine chapters are somewhat captivating and entertaining but the last couple are an echo of just about every other anti-Iraq book out there. If that is what your looking for, just search "Iraq War" in Amazon and you may be blessed with finding a whole book based on the "President Bush`s `failure` in Iraq" endlessly caroled to the point of bloodshot eyes.
Richard Clarke isn't Frank Rich (fortunately) so we hope we might be felicitous enough to read something that might contain a bit of originality, which is scarce in the end parts.

He tries to portray himself as a modern day Paul Revere in the war on terrorism. He coincidently had all of the knowledge about Al Qaeda before 9/11 and makes it seem as if the Government saw him as just another "boy crying wolf" Who knows for sure? This is his account and we can take everything as hard-line fact without seeing some exaggerates, discredits, even defamation in between, as written by the hand of God. Wouldn't there be something Bush did correct during his four years of office? His good friend Clinton had a whole 8 blithesome years to work with his angelic NSA advisor, might be find any credit to a president other than Clinton anywhere in the pages? Giving credit to Bush for anything ends at the extent of "Bush isn't as dumb as everyone says he is, although he doesn't read many books unlike our immaculate Clinton".

This is not an anti-Iraq book in it's entirety. Perhaps Amazon wishes to sell us that in hopes of the ever so rising polls in disfavor of the war would turn out the "truth-searching" pacifists book buyers. Mr. Clarke does a good job of stuffing every ounce of opposition over every Republican president's foreign policy he has worked with into only Twelve Chapters. Maybe if the 04' elections were so close to the book's release date, we could of expected a lengthier book. He even managed to stitch a small bit of his dissat

This book is probably the most enlightening book that I have encountered with regards to 9/11. He gives the events of what happened that day in the White House and what he did during that time. It was amazing to see that Presidents have their own agenda and in some cases, like this one, it really doesn't matter what others have to say. (Of course, most people realize that already.) He also gives information regarding what the U.S. did do as well as what they should have done to possibly prevent the events of 9/11 from ever happening. I believe that every American must read this book, whether you are republican, democrat or independent or just don't care about politics. This book puts things in a perspective that many Americans don't think of!

Dick Clarke has served four Presidents - both Republican and Democrat. His frustration with the Bush administration and its War on Terror is palpable in all of his writings and pronouncements - both public and private. In order to state his case and share his personal views of the failures of many of the policies leading up to and subsequent to the events of September 11, 2001, Clarke has opted to deliver an interesting one-two punch combination - a non-fiction account of his life inside the National Security teams of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, and then a novel that projects the potential fallout from the policies currently in place. In this present posting, I will address his best seller, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." In a follow-on posting I will talk about the novel, "The Scorpion's Gate."

In the Preface to "Against All Enemies," Clarke does a clear and cogent job of delineating his premise, the parameters of his argument and the limitations of his subjective point of view:

"As the events of 2003 unfolded, I began to feel an obligation to write what I knew for my fellow citizens and for those who may want to examine this period in the future. This book is the fulfillment of that obligation. It is, however, flawed. It is a first-person account, not an academic history. The book, therefore, tells what one participant saw, thought, and believed from one perspective. Others who were involved in some of these events will, no doubt, recall them differently." (Page xxv)

"All [American leaders] have sworn to protect that very Constitution `against all enemies.' In this era of threat and change, we must all renew our pledge to protect that Constitution against all foreign enemies that would inflict terrorism against our nation and its people. . . . We must also defend the Constitution against those who would use the terrorist threat to assault the liberties the Constitution enshrines. Those liberties are under assault and, if there is another major, successful terrorist attack in this country there will be further assaults on our rights and civil liberties. Thus, is it essential that we prevent further attacks and that we protect the Constitution. . against all enemies." (Page xxvii)

Fair enough. Clarke has given us an appropriate "let the reader beware" warning that he is sharing personal recollections and is not a historian. With that caveat firmly in mind, I found myself sharing Clarke's frustrations as he recounted what went on behind the scenes in the White House as the Bush administration settled into its responsibilities to lead the nation. Despite the best efforts of Clarke and his team to convey the urgent nature of a potential terrorist threat, it took months for Clarke and his cohorts to succeed in scheduling a meeting with Condi Rice for a thorough briefing on the threat. That first meeting occurred on September 4, 2001 - 8 months into the Bush administration, and one week before the Al Qaeda attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.

Clarke paints a picture of decisions being made based on pure ideological bases, rather than on the basis of analysis of facts and credible intelligence findings. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, emerge as the chief ideologues in Clarke's account.

"On the morning of the 12th, DOD's focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, without a state sponsor - Iraq must have been helping them.

I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April when the administration had finally held its first deputy secretary-level meeting on terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the