Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

What amazes me about all of these tell-all books about the Bush white house is the fact that Bush demands, and seems to have gotten to a large degree, a good deal of loyalty. But in this new book, it seems everyone (or many) are anxious to talk. It's interesting that the author tells much of the story in the present tense. Curious indeed. Ron Suskind writes in this book that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. The White House denies all of this. Of course, one can expect this. But I find the book not well documented. So I had to question some of the assertions. The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official "that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion." This indeed is old news. The author goes on to say, "The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001." He continues, "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq - thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President's Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link." This is a very fascinating book. While the author has been accused of being a "gutter journalist", one wonders if there is truth to this. On the other hand, I didn't feel the author really proved his case. And the book seemed fragmented and not well constructed. Certainly not up to his standards. Suskind writes that the forgery "operation created by the White House and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with" a statute saying the CIA may not conduct covert operations "intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media." One wonders whose opinion this is. We want facts. From 1993 to 2000, Mr. Suskind was the senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1995. This book, with all of it's questionable tactics is still a good chronicle of the Bush administration. Therefore, it's an important work --- regardless of where the reader stands politically. Highly recommended. - Susanna K. Hutcheson