Hmmmm, what to say, what to say. The picture James Bamford paints, both of the failures leading up to 9/11 and of the failures leading up to the Iraq war are depressing. If you feel some need to go over this material again–if, say, you’ve been living under a rock for the last four years (in which case, good on you!)–this is a book you might consider.
That said, this, like his last book ??Body of Secrets?? (and perhaps his first book ??The Puzzle Palace??, though it’s been long enough since I read that that I don’t have a clear memory of the prose) seems to be in need of some more careful editing. Not so much copyediting, or even structural editing (in the sense of stringing things together in a way that makes sense), so much as redundancy editing.
It’s as if the book that was originally presented serially (which I don’t think was the case), and only later (and hastily) stitched together to be a stand-alone book–there are places where you will read very similar paragraphs giving you roughly the same background on the same thing a couple of pages apart.
I mean, my memory can be crap these days, but it’s good enough that this annoys me.
There is some interesting information I had not been aware of, with regards to the Iraqi National Congress–it was apparently setup in the early 90’s as a front for the CIA to try and destroy Saddam Hussein’s support at home. And then, a decade later, we were listening to these people tell us about the opposition situation in Iraq.
That seemed a little strange.
Oh, well, spilled milk and outrage fatigue, quite a combination.
