Bush Books

All I can say is if you are a follower of "W" and his policies, don't read this book. It portrays Bush is somewhat stupid and, certainly, semi-literate.

This book is both incredibly funny yet extremely saddening and scary. The statements are so absurd that you have to laugh yet the reality that this man is President of the United States and the most powerful person in the world is grounds for being afraid. I read through it in one sitting, as I continued to be astonished at the appearance of ignorance. As journalist Eugene Robinson said when discussing the charges that Senator Barack Obama is elitist. "I have no problem with having a smart person be President, we tried having an average guy and that didn't work very well." From the contents of this book, average looks like praise.

This book could not have been dreamed up as a work of fiction unless...well, it just couldn't have been! I have owned this book for quite a while, and pull it out whenever I need a reality check on what is happening in Washington DC. The quotes are amazing, and what is even more amazing is that someone who speaks so poorly could have ever been elected as President of the US.

There may also be a little bit of sad commentary here, as this reflects on the Bush Family tradition of not reading. It also is somewhat of a commentary on the "excellent schools" that Bush went to. How could they let someone with such poor grammar graduate?

Need a laugh...get this book...unless your a diehard W supporter!

To the anti-bush family or friend. Will bring a spark of humor to the otherwise angered person! heh

"Got to be a joker, he just do what he please..." -- Beatles from "Come Together."

This book makes me think of the classic, "Everybody Plays the Fool" because "there's no exception to the rule." The line "don't you think the joker laughs at you" from the Beatles' 1967 classic, "I Am the Walrus" is also startlingly a propos. Dumbya is a genuine fool.

This trenchant, very funny book underscores just how subliterate, inarticulate and lacking in intelligence Dumbya really is. While Dumbya's malapropisms are funny, it is also scary to think of somebody of such limited ability as president. Dumbya's administration is of the emperor's new clothing genre and I am glad to see more people coming out and publicly admitting that the emperor is naked.

Dumbya has proven yet again his overall incompetence by causing a federal deficit and his gross bungling the most senseless, needless and useless war involving America. Although much of this book covers 2000, it heralds what is yet to come from the worst president in history. For those who voted for him, I apologize if any offense was taken as none was meant. I do think that the joke ended up on everybody as we have been saddled with this incompetent person since the bungled election of 2000. Oh, and the election mess in Florida? No surprise there - Dumbya's brother Jeb's political state! Haven't they heard of the Voters' Rights Act of 1965? Apparently not, as many people were denied access to voting in the 2000 election.

There are many, myself included who feel the 2000 election was stolen. Had the fouled up election not taken place, we would not have ended up with this sad excuse of a president. I am very glad I didn't vote for him either time. Still, if you want some comic relief during these tense times, this book is for you. It is trenchant, cleverly written and well worth the read.

I am enjoying this book and I highly recommend reading it and taking appropriate action to end the criminal transgressions upon our national constitutiion.

Glenn Greenwald should be the official conscience of this country. He sees the problems so clearly and relates them in high definition.
I started with this book and progressed to "Tragic Legacy" followed by his third book "Great American Hypocrites". It has been a journey of consciousness raising.
I can now verbalize the unease I have felt in my gut for many years. It is caused by the chipping away of the fundamental tenets of our Constitution and our Democracy. It is the result of dealing with a right wing culture of public masks and, not quite, hidden agendas.
If enough people read these books, we will know what has happened and how to go about reclaiming our birthright, for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.

Glenn Greenwald documents some of the criminal activity of King (er, President) George III. 231 years ago American patriots fought off the English King George III and later elected our own President George I, who was a vast improvement. 19 tears ago we elected President George II, who was widely considered the worst president of the twentieth century. Now we have George III, whom the people never elected President (he stole the office from the men the people elected in 2000 and 2004) and he now claims the powers of an absolute monarch.

A patriot would do everything in his or her power to free us from the tyrannical rule of this new George III.

watziznaym@gmail.com

Great book, very well researched and documented. Greenwald does a great job identifying the root causes of the Authoritarian Presidency.

Written by an apolitical person, this book chronicles a disgusting abuse of power. A must read for every American citizen...if we truly hope to regain all we have lost in the past seven years. To ignore what this administration has done would be a travesty.

When factual evidence did not reveal that Saddam Hussein had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" the Bush administration simply hired the country's best media consultants to engineer support for the war: anybody who was thus questioning the administration found themselves labeled as contributing to the terrorist threat. Because reality did not give them what they wanted, the White House fabricated data.

This book, written by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton is not one of the reccent anti-Iraq war books, but it lays out the opposition to this policy in basic bare-bones langue. As such, this book is a good read for people who are not neccessarily policy wonks, but want the truth in an America of lies.

It is convienient that one of the loudest internal anti-Saddam groups in Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress, had ties to the American Pentagon. If something like that arrangement were to happen to our country, we would be screaming bloody murder. But, because Bush had convinced the public we needed to stop 'the terrorists' wherever they were, we did not ask critical questions about the opposition sources origin and their own motives.

Likewise, the same profession which once had helped to expose Watergate and FBI abuses against new left activists turned into the official White House parrot. Reporters who allegedly knew much better stopped asking critical questions about the Bush administration's official policy. Very little has publically been made of the glaring contradictions between Bush's infamous 'mission accomplished' aircraft carrier landing and our continued presence in Iraq---ironically with no formal end to the 'mission' in sight.

Why were we going to war with Iraq? What information prompted this decision? Who collected this information? If Saddam really was such a threat to international security, why weren't the other nations (especially his neighbors) who mourned with us over 9/11 agreeing with our plans?

Consequently, the American people had no idea of what they were really supporting. We were only told that dissent against the country was unpatriotic and that we needed to support whatever this president did in Iraq.

Compounding that problem, the administration went into Iraq with a distinctly western mindset. Not only did/and is still preventing Americans from being taken seriously, but it breeds terrorists who point to the 'provisional government'...etc as evidence that America only had wanted to colonize Iraq for it's own material benefit. The people working for the White House thought they were good, but they also forgot that the Iraqis and the Arab world needed to be sold on this policy to (ironically) avoid generating terrorists.

Because the authors are pre-disposed to disagree with President Bush on other issues, this book might not have a wider audience when compared with the growing number of titles of people who were neutral or even previously supportive of the administration's Iraq policy. If Iraq really does turn into another Vietnam however, I am willing to bet that this book will suddenly find a larger audience alongside the more reccently published works.

Read this book in conjunction with American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips to get the full context of how we were hoodwinked into the Iraq War and how the Bush Administration lives for getting us to give up our liberty for some alleged safety.

One of the best excerpts from this book is Rumsfeld being confronted by a journalist about his visit to Iraq, denying it and then shown a videotape from the CNN archives. This is a good book to read to get away from the Bush spin of things and see things a little clearer.

The book "Weapons of Mass Deception, the Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq," written by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber generally deals with the United States' current conflict in Iraq. However, it does not deal with the strategic side of the conflict itself but rather the steps taken to get there. This text focuses primarily on the supposed false information that President Bush and his administration provided the American public in order to gain their support. Rampton and Stauber deal with the psychological aspects that come with preparing a nations people for war.
Rampton and Stauber set out to make a contribution to their field by expressing their points of view in this particular text. The fundamental point that both authors set out to make is that the war in Iraq is a battle that is being fought unnecessarily, based on false pretenses. President Bush blatantly lied to a nation in order to better serve his own needs while asking thousands of men and women to give their lives in the process. Both authors make it their business to make clear the fraudulent steps that President Bush and his administration took in an effort to coerce a nation into believing that going to war with Iraq was the right thing to do. Furthermore, it is Rampton and Stauber's goal that after reading their work, American citizens will analyze carefully and be more skeptical of the different types of media that they come into contact with.
There are several areas covered in this text regarding the war in Iraq and the deceptive measures employed by President Bush while doing so. In fact, Rampton and Stauber claim that Bush was involved with the invasion of Iraq even before he was elected into office. Bush's key officials advocated the invasion all along but opted to wait until September 2002 to inform the public, through what the White House expressed as a product launch. This is simply the Bush administrations attempt at selling the war in Iraq to the American public through a well thought out public relations operation. The White House representatives apparently used propaganda along the lines of misinformation and constant replication in order to create the false notion that Iraq was behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. Additionally, there were allegedly forged documents which fabricate the claim that Iraq possessed vast supplies of destructive weapons. Apparently, Bush's public relations firm facilitated an opposition group known as the Iraqi National Congress, which contributed largely to the decision to go to war. While these lies were taking place, the American news media was entirely occupied with the propaganda being provided and continuously kept repeating White House communications.
"Weapons of Mass Deception, the Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq" is put together by authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. Both men work for the Center for Media and Democracy; this is a non-profit association that Stauber himself founded in 1993 in an effort to observe and expose deceptive public relations campaigns and other assorted propaganda distributed by corporations and governments. John Stauber is a longtime activist who has worked in the field of public interest, consumer, family farm, environmental and community organizations at the local, state, and national levels. Co-author Sheldon Rampton is a graduate of Princeton University and has worked as a newspaper reporter, activist, and author. Rampton and Stauber are both clearly opposed to the work that the Bush administration has done while in office. In fact, based on the work that they have done with this text as well as past work, both men appear to be against any type of governmental or public relations group that misinforms the public on any issue. Rampton and Stauber present a strong argument throughout their book, supporting their points of view with documented facts. In addition, both authors remain true to their feelings and points of view in an uncompromising fashion; perhaps this is the most concrete element to their text. The only flaw, if any present in this book is that both men are partially biased because of their dislike for President Bush. It is likely that a supporter of President Bush would not be so critical of the tactics he has used in recent years.
This text seems to be quite useful and a positive addition to work in its field. It offers readers and consumers an alternative source of information that is able to rival the media. In addition, to it being an alternative source of information, it is written by well educated and experienced men who support their adamant views with concretely documented facts. Therefore, this text is not merely two liberal men running their mouths about issues they are not well versed in, but a brilliantly put together political argument. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, Rampton and Stauber attempt to relay an important message to the public; that they should never settle and accept information that the media and government give to them. There is always the right to question the government and related associations when the public is being misinformed.

In "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq," coauthors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber take a critical look at a very important subject. The authors cover a number of intriguing facets of both the war and its background. They analyze the U.S. "propaganda blitz" to improve the U.S.'s image in the Muslim world-a strategy they judge an "abject failure." They also look at some of the individuals and organizations that played roles in the leadup to war-among them Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.

Rampton and Stauber accuse the Bush administration of many distortions in its attempt to "sell" the war as if it were a product. One of the book's most interesting sections is the authors' deconstruction of the Bush administration's wartime catchphrases: "axis of evil," "coalition of the willing," "shock and awe," etc. They critique not only the U.S. government, but also the Saudi regime.

The book also looks critically at the media's role in the war. The authors accuse the "right wing media echo chamber" of promoting a culture of fear and intimidation. Among the figures whose work they question are Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Ollie North. Particularly intriguing is the authors' look at differences in U.S. and Arab TV coverage of the war.

I should note that I am an Army Reserve officer who has done a tour (2003) in Afghanistan and is currently serving in Iraq, and that I am firmly committed to carrying out my mission. I was not bothered or offended by this book. I believe that the authors are doing a service in challenging Americans to be more careful and critical consumers of information. This book dares its readers to analyze and decode the messages that they receive from the government, the media, and the advertising industry; it also suggests that we need to know and learn from history. I recommend this book to readers regardless of their political persuasion.

Excellent description of the histories of the primary foreign policy players during the first Bush Administration. Surprisingly objective and non-emotional considering the time in which it was written. An entertaining read that personalizes the individuals involved. My only wish is that we had such material covering all U.S. policymakers, so that we might have a better idea as to who is actually leading us.

James Mann's "Rise of the Vulcans" goes beyond a mere mini-political biography of Bush's war cabinet. My take on this book is that there was a dual purpose in Mann's intent on writing this book. Yes, he gives a history, and a very good one, for each of the war cabinet members. But more importantly, he provides those key details that will lead reasonable people to fill in some mysterious blanks about America's recent past and draw conclusions that are in fact, butressed and promoted outside the lines of establishment thought. The implications are profound. Not only do we learn about solid connections (even as solid as a brotherhood) with the state of Israel, but that there are only a few people on this planet (such as Cheney and Rumsfield) who can execute a COG (Continuity of Government) plan. These details, along with the power-monger personalities and the ties to the Standford U. foreign policy groups (lead by George Shultz who is handling the North American Union program for the CFR), provide ample support for a conclusion that the American Empire has shifted into high gear. Let not truth, humanity, or conscience get in the way. Finally, while Colin Powell did all three of the above (truth, humanity and conscience) a gargantuan disfavor at the United Nations, one can only surmise that his invitation to be a cabinet member was based soley on his integrity and character, for the purpose of legitimizing the Bush administration. While Powell resigned when he figured out what the Vulcans were really up to, his integrity, character and legitimacy had been forfeited and left running in the sewers...at the UN...

The best book on the personalities that made up the first Bush term, and believe me, I have read a bunch of them. All the Woodward books and other beltway books of the season come and go, but Mann's book I think will be seen as the best contemporary accounting of the personalities from the first terms( Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Powell, Armitage, Wolfowitz, etc, etc) that you're going to find. This is obvious a book that is highly critical of all the figures in that presidency, but not the propagandistic way other books are. Mann is harsh, but fair and does an especially good job of explaining what the neoconservatives actually is and the really nasty hatred between the Cheney people and the Powell people. Even after however many years, this is still essential reading for political junkies.

This is a very interesting book- one that is still very important in trying to understand the mind set and ideology of the current misadministration.
As a group biography and a beginner's primer on the evolution of America's foreign policy since the Nixon administration, Mann's book is excellent. He discusses the "real" politic approach of Kissinger, the Carter doctrine, the Reagan doctrine, what became known as the Powell doctrine, and the Bush/Rice doctrine of preemptive strikes. Along the way, he lucidly portrays the roles that each of the Vulcans played in that development.
It should be obvious from reading the reviews below that Mann tries very hard to be fair and objective. Some people seem to believe him as being overly fair to Democrats and some to the current gang of miscreants. I guess you can tell on which side of that divide I fall. Several comments about his history come to mind.
One of the best points that Mann makes about the weakness of the Democrats is that they don't seem to develope people who are both politicians and experts on foreign affairs (with the exception of Al Gore). There is no one like a Rumsfeld or a Cheney or a Bush 1. By that I mean there are no Demos who develope long term relationship with the intelligence, the defense and the foreign affairs communities. Thus the Demos always seem relatively weak in these areas. It should be obvious that the Republicans have beaten the electorate over the head with this fact. That needs to change. The chants of "peace now!" are simply not enough to constitue a foreign policy. The Demos need to articulate an alternative foreign policy vision.
On a different topic, I am somewhat troubled by the way Mann has picked and chosen his sources. He leaves out entirely from his account any reference to the sort of incident that Richard Clarke talked about in his book, "Against All Enemies", where he related how on Sept. 12th or 13th, Rumsfeld was already trying to link the 9-11 attacks to Iraq in spite of expert opinion to the contrary. I think Mann has downplayed considerably the enmity that the Vulcans felt toward Iraq and their blindness to any argument against an attempt to overthrow Hussien.
Part of why this omission bothers me is that Mann's history is no better grounded in verifiable sources then Clarke's. If you read Mann's notes, they are full of references to unnamed sources. This is an unavoidable issue in the writing of current histories. The author inevitably get used by players who are trying to manipulate public presentation of their actions. But you do end up wondering why authors end up ignoring some sources and not others. Why didn't Mann interview Clarke for this book?
In decisions like that one, the author's interests and ideological foibles are revealed.
I think in Mann's case, he tries too hard to be fair. And that makes him blind in some ways to just how misguided the Vulcans have been. And to how much they misguided the American people.
Mann also does not include the extent to which it was obvious that the King George and his royal bullies were manipulating the data in the windup to the war. Anyone who actually read more then the front page of the newspaper at the time noted that on the same days that everyone trumpeted Powell's or Rumsfeld's presentation of the WMD data, in the back pages there were articles about long time experts in the Mideast intelligence community talking off record about the ambiguity and unreliability of that same data. None of this is discussed in Mann's book.
I do think that this book brings out what is the central problem in American foreign policy which is to what extent military power should be relied upon as the means we use to enforce our policies. The Vulcans feel that we can basically dictate to the world the way things are going to be. I would argue that the insurgency in Iraq proves otherwise. Mann's book, in spite of its weaknesses helps to clarify the issues in that debate. For that reason, all of us should consider reading it.

This book was published a year after the commencement of the current (2007) war in Iraq, at a time when the initial military outcome, foreordained by the disparity of forces involved. had taken place and when the problems of the occupation and reconstruction phase were beginning to fester, with developments to come that were unknown or unpredictable with any precision. While the dismal results of the postwar situation are now known to all, the book should be read with a "pre-war" frame of mind, looking forward from 2001-2003 and not backward, if that is possible. In other words, if the reader perceives the present situation as one of abject failure, then he should look for the structural flaws of the "philosophy" responsible for that failure, as that philosophy is presented here, and not towards weak exculpatory dodges such as "incorrect implementation of a good idea". The book is not so much a summary of the specific arguments for the war as it is a history of attitudes (and careers) that are part of a broader geopolitical philosophy formed over thirty years or so, of which the drive for the war in Iraq was but one instance realized in the flesh.

As a sociological study the book can be viewed as an interesting and detailed set of case histories that illuminate that vague buzz-concept "social networking", except in this case the "society" in question is that limited subset of people driven by political ambition (or, in kinder terms, aspirations toward leadership which the aspirants feel they have merited through thought or deed) and the institutions in which they flourish. As a comprehensive case-study in the history of political ideas "Rise of the Vulcans" does an excellent job of tracing the step-by-step transformation of conservative thinking about containment and balance-of-power politics in the Eisenhower-Nixon era into the new unilateralist "crusaders for freedom" philosophy of the neo-conservative think-tankers (and "tankers" is not a bad image, since they seem to have pushed a great deal of both caution and actual recent history to the side in bulldozer fashion). If there is a common trend within the public lives of each of the six people portrayed in the book it is one of gradual drift from practical political concerns into a more rigid ideological frame of mind.

Of the six it is also not really clear how many of them are sincerely intellectually committed to the received wisdom of neo-conservative assumptions and goals - perhaps Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. In some sense the most recent high-level positions obtained by the six are all "second acts" in their own careers -- and in the sense of also being probable "last acts" in public life, this fact may have driven some of them into adopting extreme positions in order to hang on to whatever power and authority they achieved with the election of G. W. Bush, a very old and invariably dismal story. This certainly seems to be the case for Powell, and probably for Rice as well. Wolfowitz is a man who, as a bookish intellectual, always seems bewildered by the messiness of reality, and this book does nothing to dispel that image. Armitage does not appear to be a man burdened by any complicated geopolitical ideas at all but one moved by strong personal loyalties, not only to individuals but to foreign regimes which we have buoyed up only to let down when things start to go bad. In terms of the development of ideas (which can be read from the public record) and of motives (which can always only be inferred) it is Cheney who comes across as the most questionable of the six. His career as it is documented here is full of self-contradictions in the realm of policy statements (most pointedly concerning any compelling "need" to remove Saddam Hussein, which he dismissed in 1992); the only consistent threads in his life are ambition for office and its perquisites, payback to his allies and sponsors, and his ability to gingerly practice a "rubber glove" handling of contentious issues in order to be able to disassociate himself from any failures stemming from his involvement in public policy. This is only vaguely hinted at in the book but should be obvious to people who have watched his performance as Vice-President.

(The Vulcans, who anointed themselves with this nickname, should have read a little more classical history or delved into a study of Graeco-Roman mythology. Vulcan, aka Hephaestus, was the god of the forge (and therefore responsible for the creation of iron weaponry, which was the wonder of the world when it appeared in the late Bronze Age) but he had other well-known characteristics which it would be unwise for a public figure to associate himself or herself with. He was the butt of the Olympian gods' malicious humor -- and the gods could be downright nasty and certainly politically incorrect in this respect -- due to his status as a cripple and a cuckold. Perhaps, given their penchant for lofty, self-serving pronouncements, they should have called themselves the Jovians and been done with it.)

"Rise of the Vulcans" is judicious and fair-minded -- none of the portraits is a "hatchet job" and, while the author makes critical observations on the shortcomings of some aspects of the neo-conservative's ideas about geopolitics, he also states areas where he agrees with their interpretation of reality and their policy recommendations. In the case of the Vulcans the history of events on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East will do the hatchet man's job, and future historians will either condemn them in far-too-simple terms or attempt to rescue their reputations by "revisionist" prestidigitation or slanderous assaults on their critics. The circus of American political life goes on, and only after the six and their ring-master have left the center ring, will it be seen how deeply and for how long they have damaged America's position in the world, and, more importantly, its conception of what is acceptable behavior at home and abroad. While this reviewer hopes that their failures will undermine the next incarnation of American exceptionalism and its current drive for hegemony under a spurious "idealistic" banner, he is not optimistic about such an outcome. We'll just go on fooling ourselves because we don't like the alternative (i.e., understanding the limits of power and acting accordingly and with less swagger and silly self-righteousness).

This book is listed at 112 pages but this is an illusion. Many pages are blank, many have only a few sentences or a long string of silly poetry. If you subtract out the lesbian philosophical musings, you have about two pages of useful information. In fact, on pages 121-122 of "The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex" you get the same basic instruction plus tons of good advice on other subjects. Don't waste your money on this book.

The best thing with A Hand in the Bush it the title; which is both clever, funny, and actually quite fitting, since the book is, after all, a manual in how to insert "a hand" into a woman's "bush", so to speak. Now fisting is a quite extreme thing to do, nothing that you should attempt with a drunken one-nightstand or something, and therefore it's good that there's a manual available for anyone who wants to try this.

But, however, the book itself isn't as great as its title. Sure, fisting can be quite dangerous and unless you're a complete retard you'll know already that inserting an entire hand into a woman can cause her considerable harm unless you do it right. So it goes without saying that you shouldn't wear any rings, don't have any broken nails, not be drunk or on drugs, have tons of lube available, and just be overall careful.

We all know this, even if we haven't tried fisting in the first place, but still these advice are repeated throughout the book. Good things to mention, sure, but it's just so obvious that it kind of feels redundant to write a book about it.

However, this is a fun book to own. It doesn't have any kinky photographs or anything (just rather dull black and white drawings), but buy it nonetheless and make sure to keep it somewhere that your next guests are sure to notice it. If nothing else it's sure to make the conversation going...

I love fisting, so this book is right on for me. I also like fisting videos. I would say this is a great book for details regarding how to put one's whole hand into a vagina.

my pussy has never felt so good. When I got done shoveing my fist up there, I put the magazine, the book, a 15 pound ham, and finally my fat headed dog named melmann. I love it. My pussy loves it too!

Excellent book. It really probes the issues and gets deep inside the subject. I'm sure it has come in handy for most readers and I give it a huge thumbs up.

I enjoyed the book, I'm not real big on long drawn out reads, however I had a hard time putting it down. Rocky used true-life stories told with a good sense of humor and compassion as well as relating to larger life issues. The book gave me a bit of the feel of Alaska and how wild it can be.

I also spent a week up at Rocky's Lodge in July with my Dad, 3 Brothers, and all the sons and nephews 13 in all. We caught many fish (released most of them) along with some great fun with Rocky's family guides and staff. The accommodations of the lodge and the food were incredible.

Can't wait for the next book!

I picked up this book at the recommendation of a friend. I could not put it down. It tells one hair raising, exciting, interesting, and amusing Alaskan adventure story after another. I especially loved the story of President Bush tweaking the big Austrians and their star fishing guide with one amazing catch after another.
This book is much more than a collection of hunting and fishing stories though --it is the story of a passionate man, with the support of a long suffering, loving wife pursuing his calling with everything God has given him. This book captures the pure fun of living life to the fullest and bringing others along to share in the experience. It is obvious that the great delight of the author is to have others experience the joys of the Alaskan wilderness with him. This book is written in a way that allows many of us to vicariously share in the fun at a safe distance from grizzly bears and near fatal plane wrecks and boat crashes.

I must say, from the perspective of someone who has never experienced the Alaskan wilderness firsthand Wild Men Wild Alaska does an amazing job of painting the beauty and nostalgia for it's readers. This is definitely one of those books that you just can't put down, highly recommended!

I purchased this book with high hopes that I had come across something really good. However, upon reading it, I unfortunately became quite disappointed with the man and his book. My main complaint is that he seems to exercise poor judgment in many of his expeditions. He makes many careless mistakes in the wilderness which needlessly jeopardize himself and his clients. One example is where he does not take his rifle with him to the creek knowing there are bears in the area. That is a careless mistake. Any guide worth his weight always carries his gun with him, always. He cited stories of sleeping in blood-stained clothes. That is another careless mistake. He cites examples of harrowing rescues, but most of which occurred due to his poor planning and recklessness with regard to his environment. Most of his scary situations probably could have been avoided if he had shown better judgment and had planned better. I also found his analogies to the faith rather forced. I paraphrase: "Alaska is really tough, so is the Christian walk." Or another example, paraphrasing once again, "There are some nasty people in life who want to get you, just like some mean animals in Alaska." Another criticism is that the book seems to have been written by a 4th grade student. The vocabulary is too basic; sentences are very poorly written throughout the book, i.e., his syntax and morphology. He uses exclamation points and italics almost in every other sentence, which is a substitute for poor writing. I really wanted to like this book, but it was almost insulting that a Christian book is so poorly written. I am wondering how this book made it past the editors in it's published condition. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to have much respect for the beauty of the land and the creatures he is killing. It never seems to enter his mind that he is a steward of God's creation and Alaska is place of unsurpassed rugged beauty. I am not opposed to hunting, but he rarely speaks of conservation or stewardship. I don't want to just disparage the book without offering some solutions. If you want to read a book about real adventure in Alaska, not unnecessary adventure due to carelessness, please read "Alaska's Wolf Man" which is the story of Frank Glaser. You will gain a perspective on Alaskan adventure that you will not get from "Wild Men, Wild Alaska." I am sure Rocky is a great guy, but he is a careless guide. Most of his mistakes are careless mistakes that someone with a fair amount of rugged wilderness experience would never make. If you want real adventure, head off to Sweden for moose hunting or to Norway for reindeer hunting with a Laplander. Wild at Heart was a good, not great, book on the idea of men discovering their passion, but this one is exploitative of this new genre.

I found this book to be refreshing, honest, creative, vulnerable and challenging. Even if you're not an outdoorsman par excellance like the author, his style draws you into the great adventures of Alaska. I not only appreciated the raw realities of hunting expeditions, but also the tender realities that were revealed in the partnership Rocky has with his wife, Sharon. Here's a good read. Enjoy!!!

As is demonstrated here, Seymour Hersh may be the last of a dying breed of intrepid journalists, who through his skill and resourcefulness alone has turned himself into a "one man Truth Commission." In this book, whether about the intelligence failures leading up to 911, the incompetence in planning, executing and then consolidating the fruits of the Iraq invasion, to the "Yellow Cake" fiasco that eventually led to the "outing" of Valerie Plame; the peddling at the UN of bogus WMD intelligence data, or the mishandling of prisoners at Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib, all the way up to the failure to expeditiously and vigorously prosecute the war in Afghanistan -- not to mention the failure to catch Osama bin Laden -- Hersh has successfully trolled the back alleys of our government's secrecy as only a handful of other journalists have tried to do -- uncovering from behind this termite ridden facade, one embarrassing machination, denial, screw-up, and lie after another.

In this well written, thorough, and deeply disturbing expose, Hersh, has again, as he did with the My Lai massacre, shined a sliver of light and a beacon of hope unto the darker side of what is increasingly becoming a very troubled and shaky democracy. This is one journalist with X-ray vision that can "see through" the lies, excuses, rationalizations, and dissembling of those we have elected to represent us. With uncanny accuracy, Hersh walks through the smoke and gets us to the inside where the fire is. He demonstrates again and again that when those within our government deny an accusation, the odds are that they are at best dissembling, and at worse, that the contested basis of their denials will come tumbling out later as blatant untruths. This expose shows that those we have elected to defend our interests, have concluded that the best way to go about doing so is by lying to us and then challenging us to discover the truth through our own devices.

Since this book fails to even mention the more obvious examples of incompetence in the present government: such as Katrina, the sub-prime loan debacle, the energy crisis with $4/gallon gas, our embarrassing healthcare system, the failure of the U.S. public school system, and the failure to deal with the environment, just to name the more obvious ones - it is difficult not to become depressed at the damage the current political authorities have inflicted on our way of life.

But what is even more disconcerting about the stream of revelations in this book, is that most of what has been done it seems, has been done gratuitously, totally unnecessarily, and is as much a product of our own lack of ability to hold our elected officials accountable, as it is to their arrogance, partisan mean-spiritedness, and just plain incompetence. Altogether, I think this points to a much deeper, and a much more disturbing concern: Our elected officials seem to have no hesitation in showing a new level of disdain and disrespect for us, the American people. But it seems that we ourselves are the blame for this, for we have dealt ourselves a losing hand:

The electoral strategy we are using of trading accountability for ideological solidarity it seems has backfired on us all. For all it does is teach the politicians how to "demagogue" their way right pass us on all matters of substance. They know that by feeding us our daily dose of "ideological cotton candy" they can take us for granted, all the while peddling what is justly ours to the corporate bigwigs who fill their campaign coffers. We actually give them permission to ignore us, and our inputs, altogether until the next election cycle. We actually give them a license to treat us like the herd of ideologically sensitive sheep that we have become.

How else could it happen in the freest and most open democracy in the world, that we cannot discover until after the fact the truth about what our government is actually doing? And then can only find out through anonymous sources, whistleblowers or the memoirs of disgruntled retirees? The very fact that our institutional channels of truth and "governmental crap-detection" are drying up should alarm every true patriot and is itself a serious indictment of our increasingly porous democracy.

Thank God that we still have one other independent resource: Seymour Hersh as a "one man crap detector." Five Stars

"Chain of Command" is an investigation into the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and the success in modeling it after the Guantanamo Bay facility.
The book discusses the mistakes made in misidentifying people arrested with no charges brought against them. Some of these people were later released due to their innocence.

Mr. Hersh examines the report on the scandal written by General Taguba as well as the Afghanistan war report from Hy Rothstein. Some interesting comments about the Afghanistan war from Wesley Clark were detailed.

A lot of the book's content deals with Rumsfeld and his missions. One was the quest to wrest control of covert paramilitary operations away from the C.I.A. He also commandeered military decisions from the Pentagon. History has proven that those decisions provided disastrous results.
From page 362 Seymour Hersh sums up how the administration operates-"Rumsfeld handled the dirty work and kept the secrets,but he and the two White House leaders were a team."

The author demonstrates how the Afghanistan war was used as a stepping stone or launching point for the real,predetermined cause all along-the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Hersh examines how intelligence(lack of it in another sense)is used in this administration. Rather than having the agencies that are qualified to vet,investigate,and decide the accuracy of intelligence examine it; the White House and particularly the VP office will sometimes manufacture it and then leak it as evidence that can be used to justify pre-planned actions.
The author investigated the fake Niger-Uranium documents that were oppurtunistic "evidence" of the fantasy WMD's that were never found in Iraq. His tracing the history of that document was quite interesting, although he didn't pinpoint the origin.

He also takes a critical look at the policy setters-Richard Perle,Paul Wolfowitz,and Douglas Feith. Perle radically changed foreign policy. Of Perle-"It's an impressive achievement that an outsider can have so much influence and has been given an institutional base for his influence."- an observation quoted on page 193.

Contrasted with the current war on terrorism was Jordan's success in dismantling Abu Nidal's organization.

On the topic of intelligence...there are some troubling, indirect ties from Saudi Arabia's rulers to terrorist groups. Equally troubling is Mr. Hersh's reports of offers from Syria in assisting with the war on terror that were arrogantly dismissed. Syria is looked at suspiciously while there is evidence that Pakistan has been assisting Iran in it's goal of attaining nuclear proliferation.

While the idea of anonymous sources is not ideal, it is understandable when reading the content of this book. Recent history verifies that!

Seymour Hersh covers a lot of ground beyond Abu Ghraib expanding into the broader subject of Bush's foreign policy and the complex consequences of different end scenarios of the war in Iraq. I recommend this book and I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

Yes, its true that this book is "out of date" to a great extent. What is amazing is how much is discussed in the book and yet so little has reach the "main stream media." I consider myself a pretty "aware" person, but I was shocked to read the depths of depravity at Abu Ghraib. Hersh's reporting on the foundations of this war were also illuminating: I had an inkling of different parts, but in Chain of Command, it is all put together in a much clearer picture.

For those hestitating as to whether to pick this book up because of its age, my recommendation is: don't wait. I read this before reading Fiasco and found the two worked well together to give me a sense of the war from its inception (and "pre-inception") to early 2006. Of course, so much has happened in the last year, that even more recent books like Fiasco or State of Denial cover increasingly shrinking time periods of this war-without-end.

I'm taking it upon myself to respond to some of the book reviews that assert that "Chain of Command" is obsolete to the discourse because it was printed several years ago, meaning that the information within its pages is currently outdated and superfluous.
This contemplation obviously signifies (to some individuals) that numerous events transpired since the sanguineous Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the 9/11 atrocities, and they feel a more recent work is in order, but believe me; you won't find a better analysis of either Abu Ghraib or the Guantánamo Bay prison scandals than in these Pulitzer Prize winning pages.

Even still, some of the other book reviewers' comments can be construed as dubious statements inasmuch as finding this book outdated. I think they should regard this as a history book.
So, with that said, I totally disagree with their assessment because most Americans are still obtuse about what transpired before, during, and after the 9/11 attacks.
They (many Americans) are also extremely oblivious about the prevarications transpiring momentarily within the confines of our government, or the alphabet agencies such as the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the corporate dealings/conspiring with Saudi Arabia through American based corporations such as Dick Cheney's Halliburton, and the Bush family.

Besides, the ipso facto as to why we're not being exposed to the stories and evidence indicative of crimes against humanity presented in this book is because most of the media is acquiescing with the Bush administration's clandestine policies, which means they are passionately covering up the truth.
So, the question we as concerned citizens should be asking ourselves is, why are they (the media) perpetrating this moral turpitude/crime, and what can we do to salvage this situation for the better? Well, for starters we can start by reading books such as this and educating ourselves, that way we can win the information war that has been declared against us, and with journalist like Hersh on our team we can't fail.

In the book "Chain of Command" "the New Yorker magazine" journalist Seymour Hersh exposes a plethora of Bush intrigues and transgressions, from the torturing of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay Cuba, and the torturing/rape of detainees at Abu Ghraib, and he also exposes Bill Clinton and Ahmad Chalabi's plan to usurp the Iraqi government from Saddam Hussein. This plan was called the "End Game," and it took place in 1993. This unequivocally proves that the Clinton administration paved the way for Bush's machinations.

In addition, Hersh writes about the so-called alleged twentieth hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui who was in prison before the September 11th attacks, which the joke was on us because the media and the government were promulgating that Moussaoui was actually a terrorist threat, and this simply wasn't the truth.
Subsequent to this elucidation, Moussaoui failed his flight training course and couldn't fly a plane to save his life, or should I say kill himself.......... (I'm taking a stab at Wellerism so please forgive me).
As a matter of fact, FBI and CIA agents told Hersh that they believed Moussaoui was a wannabe terrorist/joke and that he had no reliable information leading them closer to Al Qaeda.

Moreover, Seymour Hersh's book tackles the issue of 9/11 from the standpoint that the Bush administration was negligently imperceptive and unprepared for the imminent attack against this nation.
This of course isn't the case because 9/11 was an inside job, but even still this book properly conveys the historical significance of the events that led us into the many crises that we're suffering from today, such as, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the suspension of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S.A. Patriot Act eviscerating our Constitutional rights, the circumventing of the FISA court, the fact that Bush has borrowed over $1.5 trillion from foreign nationals, which is more than all of the U.S. presidents combined, and the fact that this president gets to say and do whatever he wants even if our great grandchildren's children are going to be responsible for paying this copious debt, and the fact that Congress has little say in the matter is something we as concerned citizens should be livid about regardless of whether you're a Democrat or a Republican.

Also, Hersh uncovers the $2.4 billion dollar heroin proliferation scandal in Afghanistan, and these drugs are ending up on our streets, plus the Taliban is allegedly receiving a small cut of the profits. Hersh also details the October invasion of Afghanistan. So, if you want to receive an in depth investigative analysis into what's emerging in Afghanistan and Iraq then look no further than "Chain of Command" because Hersh uncovers the Malthusian mendacities of the Bush/Cheney administration.

"Chain of Command" really takes you on the Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib and beyond.

I also recommend reading Webster Griffin Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA. This book will fill in the gaps in Hersh's book.

Seymour you get 5 STARS!!!!

Seymour Hersh demonstrates that even 30 years after the establishment of his reputation as a skilled investigative journalist, there is plenty of fire left inside him when it comes to revealing the corruption within government, including the executive branch. Chain of Command depicts the sad state of affairs that America has been pushed into since 9/11 by the Bush administration, and how a small group of individuals were basically able to hijack US foreign policy, mismanage two wars along with the Global War on Terrorism, and commit human rights blunders while minimizing public responsibility for their actions.

The ever-present theme to Chain of Command is that major problems, ranging from Abu Graib to poor intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, were ignored by top leadership officials in an effort to either conceal unwanted truths or to plot a set course using a hypothesis and selectively use facts to confirm it (rather than taking the more logical approach of gathering the appropriate information and making an educated decision based on those findings).

Hersh covers a lot of ground, and the reader will certainly walk away with a much clearer understanding of how we got to where we are today. Highly recommended.

While this book may have been intended as a parody of Bush's colossally mean-spirited incompetence, its content is anything but parody: It is deadly serious in laying out chapter-by-chapter, fact-by-ugly-fact, and in alphabetical order, GW's "in-your face" corruption and incompetence. It underscores, more than any other book, why GW will no doubt go down as America's worse President ever.

Here in one concise compendium is not just Bush's record of "high-minded" and "entitled incompetence," but also what could easily be termed as his "intentional malfeasance" while in office. Why he and Dick Cheney were not impeached remains a mystery.

As the book notes on page 94: while street crime was on the decline all across the U.S., corporate and white-collar crime spiked above that of any government since that of Herbert Hoover's. Bush II's administration was a virtual Xmas Holiday for corporate crime and corruption.

Few may know for instance, that Enron was not the only energy company that was "busted out," and "raided" leaving tens of thousands without jobs and billions lost in retirement funds. The book gives a lineup of others that followed the Enron pattern: El Paso Oil, Williams Oil, Duke Oil, Dynergy, Mirant Energy, and Reliant Oil, mostly Texas-based and big contributors to GW's campaign coffers. These, along with Enron, were also raided and implicated in the "contrived" California energy crisis, in which, for the first time in its history, that state experienced a statewide blackout before energy prices were reinitialized at a new quantum higher level.

Read the full story of GW's connection to the Bin Laden family through Texas oil-man James Bath. After 911, it seems that the real war that Bush conducted was not on the Saudi backed terrorists, but on the economic interests of the majority of the American people. The "Bush Warriors" under the rallying cry of "no more class warfare" was nothing if not a war by a handful of the rich on the poor, and on the Constitution itself: Inadequate regulations were further reduced on the environment, on worker's health, on consumer protections, on programs designed to help veterans and the unemployed, and on the elderly and the poor.

While 2.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts were awarded to the rich, a two-dollar per hour increase in the minimum wage was denied the poor. Bush's own "No Child Left Behind Program" was left behind when it came to funding: It remained unfunded. At the same time, the two areas with the largest contributors to the Bush campaign, healthcare and energy, saw healthcare costs and gas prices skyrocket. This of course occurred at the same time that profits in these two areas increased to such obscene levels that it embarrassed company officials. They immediately began advertisement campaigns to offset the obscenity of the embarrassingly large profits.

In summary, I knew the Bush administration was incompetent, corrupt and overall just plain bad, but not this bad. What a revelation.

Five stars

I enjoyed the book very much, but there was one thing he said that I disagree with, and was totally unnecessary and perhaps a little damaging to his case, and that was his comment that we really should have 100% inheritance tax, with the argument that people who inherit have already been given the best educational and other opportunities, etc.. The irony I found in that statement was that when my parents died and I inherited probably more than some I grew up with did, part of the reason for this was that we scrimped and saved and had to do without some of the things the neighbors kids got, because my parents lived through the depression and never got it out of their skin. I earned my inheritance in part by doing without things to allow my parents to be able to save and invest for the future, a future that unforunately for them was cut shorter than it was planned to be by a tragic accident. Okay, there were plenty who had it worse than us, whose parents didn't earn enough to save even if they had wanted to, but even if I can't convince the author that I deserved to not have my whole inheritance taken away from me, there was a missed opportunity here.

I am precisely the sort of person Bush was probably trying to pretend his relief in inheritance was supposed to help, protecting the honest middle class family that wants to pass on their hard earned savings to their children..we all know the line. But in actuallity long before Bush the law already provided quite adequately for people like me. Even back in 1994 when I inherited, the first $600,000 of an estate was tax exempt at least when passed on to the children, and I suspect that has gone up in adjustment for inflation. Now there's a funny quirk in the inheritance law that allowed us twice the exclusion in effect, because my parents died in a car accident at the same time, which allowed them each to pass on $600,000 untaxed. If they had not died at the same time we would have had to pay some inheritance tax, but even with only the first $600,000 untaxed it would not have been oppressive. With the already in existence back in 1994 $600,000 exclusion a family with 2 children could pass on $300,000 to each without anyone needing to pay inheritance tax at all. In our case there were 3 of us, so only our first $200,000 would have been untaxed if one or our parents had died before the other, still not exactly hardship, though.

In other words, the point about inheritance tax relief being tax relief for the rich could have been made much better without clouding things by making it seem like an argument about whether inheritance should exist at all. By saying that kind of thing he is unnecessarily playing right into the hands of Bush supporters that will be all too eager to say, that he (and by association all Bushhaters) wants to steal the family home away from the children before they have even had the chance to properly grieve.

I can't get over how great this book is! It is well organized (all social/political issues are in alphabetical order). It covers all aspects of the presidents mistakes from the environment, appointment of jugdes, the war on terror, etc. Its presented in a concise manner so that its interesting but still information packed. This book is a must have for anyone who disagrees with Bush or anyone who is blind enough to think he is a good president.

I had a whole plethora of emotions when I read this book. I laughed hysterically when I realized how stupid our President really is, I was astounded by the investigative journalism and the their findings, all of which should never happen in the office of the President of the United States. The reporting on the war and the real reasons we went there are sadly shocking. Everyday, you read about the deaths of the young men and women from 18 to 24, just babies really. None of them have been alive long enough to learn how beautiful life can really be, and it is just heartbreaking. Jack Huberman has done a fantastic job of documenting the lies and scare tactics used by this administration to terrify the population, and the member's of Congress into voting for Bush's blank check into Iraq. The author needs to update the book since it was originally published in 2003. The book would double or triple in size by the time the author starts digging into all the alleged crimes committed by Paul Bremer in Iraq, the illegal contracts with American companies that should have gone to the Iraqi's, and the missing billions in cash. What would they find if they really looked at what that arrogant, ignorant liar, our Commander in Chief (the decider), has done to this country. Why for example, do we have over 100,000 American businessman and workers who are earning billions, when 75% of Iraqi men can't find a job to feed their families? Our country is going broke, we have become a severly fractured society and we no longer have any "good standing" left anywhere in the world. "The Decider" has destroyed our great nation and his foolish decisions are directly responsible for the thousands of dead troops and another 30,000 severly disabled men and women. It is almost too much to believe the true axis of evil, (Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld), could do so much damage to such a proud nation, in such a short period of time. Our ecomomy is in ruins, and they have stripped our Armed Services down to its bare bones. They have cut the funding on every program they possibly could, including VA hospital benefits to pay for this fiasco. It will take generations for this country to recover. George Bush will walk into retirement admiring himself for this hideous mess, and he will dump it on the next President to clean up. It took "The Decider" less than six years to turn the United States into a gigantic bull's eye. Terror is already walking on our soil, just patiently waiting.

I found this to be a great book full of facts and statistics necessary to back up the feelings that anyone who picks this up to read must already have.

I especially enjoyed the history of the administration officials that was offered and the specific information on the Iraq "situation."

A quick read, which had me both shocked and in awe at some points. :)

This book made it clear to me how the neocons managed to infiltrate the highest reaches of our government. George W Bush is not as dumb as he appears to be, he is intellectually lazy. What better way for the neocons to take over the government than to use him as a patsy and get their ideals into law. The foremost of those ideals is that "the end justifies the means". This is diametrically opposed to what I have always thought of an American value.
I am grateful to Unger for this clear and succinct account of Bush's psyche
and the workings of the Neocon movement.
I think everyone should read this if only to know what's happening in our country.

unger is so eager to make a point, he constantly paints the world in black and white terms and, as a result, he constantly contradicts himself. In the House of Bush, Poppy Bush views "the horrific photos of Iranian soldiers whose bodies had been burned by chemical weapons" as "a delicate public relations problem rather than a moral issue." In this newest text, Poppy Bush good, Baby Bush bad. And Kissinger, known to be responsible for installing military dictatorships throughout Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Argentinia) and the deaths of more than fifty thousand civilians, is suddenly "good" in contrast to the evil neoconservatives.

lots of interesting facts but these need to be separated from unger's off-the-wall opinions.

So far after 140 pages read there may be 3 pages relating to George W. Bush. It's a good history book but very little dialog on George W. Bush.

I've been to Iraq many times. Unger gets it right. Good read. If you're on the Right and love Bush you'll hate it. Lefties will be reassured. The Middle will learn how we were conned. And why we shouldn't have been.

This book is astonishing
it shows in rivetting detail the perfect storm that arose from the following 4 factors:
George W. Bush's life-long feeling of living in his father's shadow
The forward march of the right (particularly the neocons) in terms of institutions, media, think tanks and the political and elite circles in particular.
The Rove strategy of allying the GOP to the evangelical movement to create a permanent Republican revolution

The coallescing of the previous 3 factors in allowing the GOP to view the younger Bush as their saviour (having been gravely disappointed by his father the 41st president) because he so convinced the various evangelicals that he met that he was the real deal (and he was).

it is a sober book, it's very well written (in the style of a very good Vanity Fair article which of course Unger co-edits) it makes its case really well and as you read it, since it's such recent history, you find every outrage detailed in there (except curiously the scandal of the sacking of the federal judges). I was nodding my head thinking, yep, I remember this, yep this too, and this etc...
I was very surprised that it was so up to date that it even had the phony incident in which the Pentagon tried to suggest that Iranian dinghies in the gulf had tried to 'suicide' attack the American fleet..As if!

Unger is a serious commentator and I think it's fair to say that he views the grand sweep of history through the psychological analysis of the various characters involved rather than say 'powerful forces that shape history'. He makes a very convincing case that it's the neocons rather than anything else who are driving America's disastrous Bush 43 administration. The key characters come out looking deeply flawed.

The two biggest villains are Rumsfeld and especially Dick Cheney.
A third foe that emerges even though he never really spells it out, is the US mainstream media. In plenty of asides, he makes a subtle point along the lines of "it escapes me ...it mystifies me why the US media did not pick up on this." This is naive in the extreme, but I'm not going to bleat on about this, he's clearly a creature of the media himself and he probably does not want to make his book unreviewable.

Two unexpected heroes emerge from the book, Bush snr and his lifelong friend and advisor Brent Scowcroft.

I learned a great deal by reading this book and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who instinctively wondered how the Bush 43 cabal created such a horrific mess of their 2 [illegal] terms.

There are plenty of fascinating footnotes in this book, and they are well worth reading too.