Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror (MP3 CD)

Rating:
Summary: The Predator and "lies"
Review: Someone who claims he works on the Predator--and he may very well--says that the Predator was never deployed anywhere near Afghanistan prior to 9-11. Since he has not heard of the deployment of two Predators in the Clinton years to Central Asia, he asserts it is a "lie." Well. A "lie" is a strong term. And just because one person has not heard something does not make that thing a falsehood. Let's consider sources, which are amply footnoted in my book. First, my book is not the first to report this fact; it has appeared in the Washington Post (multiple times) and in congressional testimony (ditto). Moreover, Richard Clarke, Clinton's counterterrorism czar, and Sandy Berger, National Security Advisor, told me on the record that two were deployed, spotting what they believed was bin Laden three separate times. Other intelligence and Centcom command personnel confirmed the fact. After one crashed in the late summer of 2000, a bureaucratic blame game grounded the other plane. If this person wants to contact me to discuss this, I'd be happy to talk to him. I suggest that he reach me through my press guy, Peter Robbio, at [phone] ext. 116--so I'm not deluged with calls from people who have not read the book and assume it is a Clinton hit job. For the general readers, I suggest that you do not judge a book by its cover, its title, or its publisher. Simply read the first few pages on Chapter one and I think you'll agree that this is the first comprehensive (and to my mind, fair-minded) book on the history of bin Laden's war on America in the Clinton years.

Rating:
Summary: Missed Opportunities
Review: The author traces the Clinton action and inaction in regard to Bin Laden and terrorism through the nineties. He highlights the times when the number one terrorist could have been killed or captured but there was no go-ahead given from the highest level. Opportunities for obtaining foreign intelligence from other governments regarding Osama bin Laden were also met with inaction. There were those in the lower echelons of the administration who were dedicated to finding and dealing with Bin Laden but the support at higher levels was pretty well non-existent except for Richard Clarke. There was the well publicized lack of translators of mideast languages in the intelligence arena and an effort to solve this problem was not supported at the highest level of the administration. The author also provides considerable evidence to support his contention that there was a significant connection between Iraq and the network of Osama bin Laden.

In short the author maintains that Osama bin Laden had declared war on the United States by several attacks on U.S. interests, but the Clinton Administration did not declare war on him and made little response to the attacks. I found the book to hold my interest but to provide more detail at times than I really wanted.


Rating:
Summary: Discredited book from a sad partisan hack
Review: Yes, a US president DID drop the ball when it came to fighting Al Qaeda. That president, sadly, is Bush. As is clear now from the record, and the unimpeachable testimony of Richard Clarke, it was Clinton who implored Bush to focus on Bin Laden during the transition. Bush, who had never heard of Bin Laden, chose to ignore this advice, ignore Richard Clarke's furtive recommendations to attack Bin Laden, and reduce the role of the US counterterrorism czar to near obscurity.

Bush then inexplicably repeated this mistake AFTER Bin Laden had unleashed the most horrifying attack in our nation's history. Bush has again forgotten Bin Laden, and is ignoring him entirely even today. This book's absurd revisionism is actually harmful to the security of the nation, and puts America at greater risk by ignoring obvious truths, besmearching the only US president to take Bin Laden seriously as a threat.

If only Bush were half as strong a president as Clinton. America would be so much stronger, both militarily, economically, and morally.