Yay! It's by "anonymous!!!" That means it could be ANYBODY writing this book - not even an "officer with the CIA"...
So how is anyone supposed to be able to verify any information in this book? Who will vouch for the author's claims that he/she REALLY is a "CIA officer" and not just some Walter Mitty Democrat shill with a chip on their shoulder?
Not only is "Anonymous" overly vitriolic, he/she is also quite stupid.
I agree, and just how is anyone suppose to determine the credibility of the book, when the author is anonymous. This is unbelievably treasonous. I thought CIA people had to take lie detector test every 6 months. Obviously, they have missed a few ivans.
And, well, failed miserably....
A faction within the govt. keeps talking about "international cooperation and alliances" which seems to be a code word for paying off France.
"He said the threat from radical Islam is rooted in opposition not to American values, but to policies and actions, particularly in the Islamic world.
The book denounces the US occupation of Iraq as "an avaricious, premeditated unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat," and said it would fuel the anti-American sentiments on which bin Laden and his followers draw.
Well, this is an example of the Joseph Wilson-esque spinning I sensed before ie, the rehashing of the "immediate threat" pre-war talking point to keep Saddam "contained", in power, and OPEC and France happy.
And, if one reads Anonymous' first book, he does say it's American values that are part of the Islamist's fears, and the author approvingly cites Samuel Huntington "clash of cultures" analysis. So given these short statements, this agent's been "turned."
given the secretive factional fighting played out in the press and in books, Bush might have lost some people a lot of money, which they think they can recoup by installing Kerry.
The CIA fears that anonymous could become a target of al quaeda??
Seems they would rather enjoy the message of this, I should think.
Such garbage. The left is hitting the panic button, clutching at straws.
In other words guys you'd have to have a screw loose to believe that Afghanistan, for example, is worse off than before we kicked out Osama and the taliban.
A book by an anonymous CIA - that makes no sense!
Why are they doing things like this. CIA is a good agency, if my...did something like this it would be shot.
Well, it was Clinton's watch, so this was probably a Clinton croney. Friend of Valerie Plame, I wonder?
Not only that, but Afghanistan and Iraq were seething with antu-American passion before we went there. Does this pissant think it would not have been a "pressing certainty" we will be attacked in the continental US again, if we do nothing? What would this idiot have done, NOTHING???
No wonder our CIA is weak. It is the problem, not the solution
We are fighting Wahabi Islam. So as the Family Saud is the financial backers of Wahabism we in effect we are fighting Saudi Arabia by proxy.
All of these kind of books have become a joke. This war has hardly begun and yet books are coming out that the war has been lost. I wonder when this writer actually began his book. He obviously had his thesis set and knew what the publisher wanted him to write. If it is too early to write a book that the war on terror has been won, then why isn't it too early to write that the war has been lost?
So right away we know how competent this guy is.
the author of the book says US leaders "refuse to accept the obvious". "We are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency -- not criminality or terrorism
It's well enough to say that it's important for our leaders to grasp the nature of our enemy. It's idiotic to suggest (as this seems to) that it's a good idea for a President to come out and say publicly "we are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency". Yeah, that's genius strategy, right there: unite the entire Islamic world. Tell them straight out we see them as our enemy - or words which will be perceived as such.
I prefer the "boiling the frog" strategy myself. You don't tell the frog of your plan to put him in a pot of water and boil him before you do it.
and our policy and procedures have failed to make more than a modest dent in enemy forces," he said.
If he thinks that success in this war is measured by body counts then he's an idiot. As things stand our body count ratio is just terrific, but to really make a "dent" in "enemy forces" we'd presumably have to kill millions. That's what this guy wants? That's what we're trying to avoid having to do.
He said the threat from radical Islam is rooted in opposition not to American values, but to policies and actions, particularly in the Islamic world.
Of course. Terrorism is a geopolitical lever used by Islamic dictators from their position of weakness. Suicidal to attack the US directly, so funnel attacks through third-party "terror groups". Even I get that.
What I don't get is why this Anonymous thinks that it would be a good idea for the President to come out and say all that publicly. Yes of course "they hate us for our freedoms" is simplistic nonsense but do we *really* want Bush saying "they hate us because they don't want us doing X Y Z", thus sparking a self-defeating, angst-ridden domestic debate with the "let's stop doing X Y Z" faction?
The book denounces the US occupation of Iraq as "an avaricious, premeditated unprovoked war
Didn't know Michael Moore was a spook... live and learn.
"avaricious" makes no sense. "premeditated"? of course (duh). "unprovoked" makes it seem like our relations with Iraq for the last ten years have been totally normal. No ceasefire, no firing on our planes, no assassination attempt, no Al Qaeda links, nope. We & Iraq have been like two peas in a pod. How stupid is this guy?
against a foe who posed no immediate threat,"
Yup, obviously we should've waited till they became an immediate threat. More strategic genius on display here, that same genius that proved so helpful in nabbing Bin Laden.
and said it would fuel the anti-American sentiments on which bin Laden and his followers draw.
The logical conclusion of this kind of reasoning is that the best strategy is to minimize "fueling" anti-American sentiments, by doing whatever bin Laden demands. Then we'll have peace in our time!
"There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq," the author writes.
That's because bin Laden is (well, was) a millenial fantasist. Marx knew that class conflict would lead inevitably to socialism which would lead inevitably to world communism, and Bin Laden knew that if the US were to occupy Iraq this would unite the Muslim World together in a fit of white hot rage and they would Rise Up and wipe the United States off the face of the earth with a hundred million suicide bombs....
"At the same time, we have waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan and Iraq seething with anti-U.S. sentiment, fertile grounds for the expansion of Al Qaeda and kindred groups."
And meanwhile our troops occupy both places. Putting them in a convenient position to fight people in those "fertile grounds".
This is a great deal better than impotently tasking CIA nerds with "tracking" such people in fertile grounds from afar.
Anonymous said he has "a pressing certainty that Al Qaeda will attack the continental United States again, that its next strike will be more damaging than that of 11 September 2001, and could include use of weapons of mass destruction."
I don't doubt AQ will attack again, or try. That is a lame metric of anything. I'd hope that such horrors will be prevented, but knowing that it's morons like Anonymous who we have on the case, does not inspire confidence.
This idiot was on with Dan Blather tonight. I missed the exact terminology but they mentioned that he was something like the head of the group going after Osama bin Laden.
My question to him would be just what in the hell he did to get Osama.
Unfortunately, most Americans are oblivious. They don't realize that members of the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc., are just government workers, just like the postal workers, IRS employees, Social Security employees, etc.. They sit on their asses, collect great salaries and retire with an inflation indexed pension - and don't rock the boat.
There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1242639,00.html
This is apparently the second book in recent years by the same "Anonymous".
Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.
"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.
"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."
The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.
The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.
But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."
Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.
He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"
And after the great job CIA did of warning us of 9/11, I would following all of their analysis to a "T"...
...not.
It should be easy to figure out who "Anonymous" is. Just look for the guy who headed this task force and was subsequently demoted and removed from the loop due to incompetence.
Balony!
I said that when President Bush assumed office that he needed to get rid of anything and everyone that ws associated with a clinton.
Anything and everything that the clintons touch or even come near to, they corrupt.