Rating: 
Summary: 100% on the Mark
Review: Gore Vidal knows, man, HE KNOWS! This man has been there at the HIGHEST LEVELS of government. THey can't pull the wool over his eyes! Unlike Noah CHomsky, Gore cares deeply about the state of the country. His criticisms may sting, but if his advice was followed, this would be a much better country.
Rating:
Summary: what a great book!
Review: This is a book of essays written over the last ten years.The lead essay, about 9/11, has stunning info. First, Vidal alleges (and I agree with him) that Bush and Co. were planning to invade Afghanistan long before 9/11--to topple the Taliban and hence expedite the Unocal pipeline. The Taliban and bin Laden got wind of this (the invasion was supposed to start in October 2001), and ordered the 9/11 attacks to derail it. (It had the opposite effect, obviously.) Second, many in the US military were stunned at the complete absence of interceptors to head off the 9/11 attacks. Military protocol states that when an airliner veers off course, Air Force jets are supposed to go up immediately and see why. This did not happen on 9/11 even though the airliners were tracked every step of the way; it did not happen even after they started crashing into buildings. Vidal suggests they may have been held back in order for the disaster to go forward--and provide Bush an excuse for the Afghanistan war and all subsequent crackdowns and all subsequent wars. Also, the book closes with a wonderful interview with Vidal. He explains the origins of terrorism, both homegrown and foreign, quite clearly.
Rating:
Summary: A Dream Come True
Review: Vidal is one of the greatest writers with which this great and sad nation has ever been gifted. He crafts the best sentences around, and his artistry never outshines the sharp smartness of his ideas. From the very first essay, this book will educate and thrill you. Don't miss it.
Rating:
Summary: The Master has done it again!
Review: ... All I can say is: Thank goodness for Gore Vidal! He is a literary and historical master, and he has done it again. The man pulls no political punches whatsoever and smacks the scoundrels with social shame for the damage they have done - and continue to do - to our once great constitutional republic. In the name of patriotism, and "homeland security," our national politicians have hijacked our liberty, our civil rights, and our dignity as citizens of a sovereign nation in order to have us all REALLY serving the business interests of the National Securiy State and the Big Business Multi-National Corporations who are REALLY running the show. ... So, what else is new? ... C. Wright Mills ( THE POWER ELITE ) and G. William Domhoff ( WHO RULES AMERICA NOW? ) have also been writing about this same subject for years. Anyone who KNOWS that the political Ruling Class of this country - which makes up the governing individuals of the modern American Empire ( The National Security State ) - exists solely in order to do the governmental bidding of the corporate Upper Class of very weatlhy plutocrats and very greedy kleptocrats KNOWS that even THEY know that we KNOW what the real situation is here ( ie: We do NOT live in a Democracy - or even a Republic any more!). Their attittude is: "SO WHAT?! What are you going to do about it?!" ... Indeed! This is the crux of the problem: what to DO about our ever-dwindling freedoms as once TRULY brave & free American citizens! In the meantime, it is good to see that people like the great writer, Gore Vidal, are still going out of their way to stick their necks out in order to educate anyone with ears to hear about what is REALLY going on in the world - right under our very noses! ... As he writes on pages 31 and 32: "But Pearl Harbor has been much studied over the years. 9/11, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if our secretive junta has anything to say about it. At the end of January '02, CNN reported: President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the Congressional investigation into the events of September 11, Congressional and White House sources told CNN. ... The request was made at a private meeting with Congressional leaders. ... Sources said Bush initiated the conversation. ... He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed. ... Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request ... " The excuse given, according to Daschle, was that an investigation "would take resources and personnel away" from the war on terrorism in the event of a wider inquiry that is not limited to the assumption that the administration's inaction was solely a consequence of "breakdowns among federal agencies." So for reasons that we must never know, those "breakdowns" are to be the goat. That they were more likely to be not break but "stand-downs" is not for us to pry. Certainly, the hour-twenty-minute failure to put fighter planes in the air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire Air Force along the East Coast. Mandatory standard operating procedure had been told to cease and desist." ... Heavy stuff, indeed! - The Aeolian Kid
Rating: 
Summary: Stick To Fiction
Review: Casting history in a light that suits the purpose of the author to sell books has only limited appeal to myself. But then I was not too excited with his other books. I hope he does not take all his views too seriously? How do you spell pompous? Junta? I think the congress is still standing? Seems a bit too much like Oliver Stone. Vidal has two left feet, and his ideas and simlar befuddled ideas are why people like Osama Bin Laden think or thought that America was to weak or confused to react to 9-11, or why the French think they can lead world opinion against America.
Jack in Toronto
Rating:
Summary: Embarrassing
Review: Did Pierre Salinger ghost write this or what? I didn't vote for W, but this book overreaches with its "junta" angle. It's the kind of haughty, contemptuous, overheated screed that may be amusing at A-list dinner parties, but doesn't really merit serious consideration. Frankly, it is irresponsible, and an embarrassment to those of us in principled opposition to the administration's policies...
Rating:
Summary: A Clarion Call to Action
Review: Gore Vidal has been a thorn in the side of the establishment for some time and, gratefully, he continues this process with this latest work, which brings us to the present on where the Republic stands. Clearly Vidal feels that it is being plundered maliciously by the corporate sector, which controls the political sector, and provides numerous details to support his position. Vidal was frequently denounced, even in contemporary legal circles, for being an isolationist. The criticism was that, given Vidal's posture, a series of Hitlers would be permitted to run rampant within society. Vidal's position is not isolationist, but rather an understanding of a system wherein manipulation is ruthlessly practiced on an international scale to bring into being purported emergencies that required military responses, in the words of Lady Thatcher's famous "aggression cannot be allowed to stand" maxim. What needs to be done, and Vidal and others such as Antony Sutton, Noam Chomsky and Mike Ruppert are currently doing it, to name three specific examples, is to unravel what transpired prior to the rush to war. For instance, the grandfather of our current president, banker Prescott Bush, provided funds which helped warrior Hitler keep his pig iron supply up to date. We also know about Reagan,Bush, Thatcher and the buildup of Saddam Hussein, along with the generous CIA assistance in bringing him to power. To get to the roots of these conflicts and to expose them is not isolationism, it is a pursuit of the truth with a design to save lives and fight corporate tyranny since ruthless profiteers ultimately garner the booty secured from military adventures. Vidal hits on many of the same cogent points regarding 9-11 made by Nafeez Moseddeq Ahmed in "The War on Freedom." Vidal makes a bold call for a new constitutional convention. He sees this as a possible prescription for American citizens to regain control of a nation being suffocated by the corporate hierarchy, as Vidal has frequently noted, the one-half of one percent actually ruling America.
Rating:
Summary: Vidal and Chomsky one of a kind
Review: Read Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Gore Vidals latest Dreaming War should be discussed by every journalist and told to the American Public, but of course it will not as the dumbing down of the citizenry is necessary in order for the Bush-Cheney Hitlerism to succeed. Why the investigation into 9-11 was curtailed was really because our government does not want the citizens to know how they are being duped into a Nationalistic flag waving aura. George W Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached immediately. By the way, Gore Vidal could not have made this up in case any neo-consevatives are listening because like Chomsky, Vidal gives the facts/information and where it came from.
Rating:
Summary: Problem With The "Malice and Ignorance" Theory of War
Review: I deeply admire writers like Gore Vidal crying out in the wilderness for morality and "humanity" in the way Man deals with Man and nation deals with nation. However, I believe such writers are fore-defeated champions of an impossible cause.
It is important to keep in mind that the most fundamental reason driving political leaders and populations to war is not malice on the one hand and misinformation or ignorance on the other. It is rather malice on both sides. Let's face it, it is hard to overestimate the latent meanness of the common man. The meanness of the powerful is self-evident to any intelligent observer since they can openly exercise it with varying degrees of impunity. That meanness in leaders and followers is unmitigated by regular visits to their shamans or houses of religious worship. It is unmitigated by education. It is unmitigated and, in fact, mostly enhanced when the individuals in question chose to call themselves "Christians" or some analogous appellation. For then, their innate meanness becomes divinely certified and can, to a large extent, unburden itself from the nettlesome restraints of guilt. I believe this meanness is built into our nervous structures and can no more be escaped than we can flap our arms and fly.
Rating:
Summary: Gore Vidal: the Only Hope For the American People
Review: In this collection Gore Vidal delivers what his fans had hoped his last book, Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace, was going to be. Namely, an in-depth look at the Bush administration's agenda concerning war in the Middle East, oil, and the deterioration of American civil liberties. In a time when Bush is using tragedies such as 9-11 and disasasters such as the forest fires in the West to further his own money-driven agenda, Gore Vidal is a voice of reason within the chaos that contemporary America has become. Buy this book. It is wonderfully researched and extremely well-written (a rarity among political books, both liberal and conservative).
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