WOW! Risen's book begins with Shrub slamming the phone down on Poppy!

[DeepModem Mom]

This is the NYT review of James Risen's book, "State of War" --- "the odious smell of truth" --


'State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,' by James Risen
Spies and Spymasters
Review by WALTER ISAACSON
Published: February 5, 2006

THIS explosive little book opens with a scene that is at once amazing and yet not surprising: President Bush angrily hanging up the phone on his father, who ''was disturbed that his son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy.'' The colorful anecdote is symptomatic of ''State of War.'' It is riveting, anonymously sourced and feels slightly overdramatized, but it has the odious smell of truth.

In these regards, the anecdote is like the scene in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's ''Final Days,'' when Nixon, very close to his resignation, begins to cry as he asks Henry Kissinger to kneel and pray with him. Indeed, James Risen may have become the new Woodward and Bernstein. His Page 1 articles in The New York Times exposed, for better or worse, the government's national security wiretapping program. And now he has produced an ''All the President's Men'' inside narrative based on anonymous sources.

At its heart is one of the great questions of the post-9/11 era: how far should we Americans be willing to go, in terms of permitting things like wiretapping and torture, to fight terrorism? Risen doesn't seem to think it's his role to probe too deeply into this. Instead, he appears to feel that if something is secret and interesting, it should be exposed.

That raises some more parochial but still important journalistic questions. When should the press censor itself in deference to national security concerns? And how much should it rely on leaks from anonymous sources? The best way to begin to answer these questions is actually to read the book rather than depend on the cable television crossfire about it, a task that is not really all that arduous since it is fast paced, quite mesmerizing and pretty short....

(NOTE: The entire review is worth reading.)


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/books/review/05isaac.html?_r=1&oref=login

[Inland]

1. "fast paced, quite mesmerizing and pretty short"

Now THAT's a good review!

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Good, and pretty rare! nt

[Straight Shooter]

3. "Honor thy father and thy mother ..."

... you worthless POS.

edit, y'all know I'm referring to bush, right? ;)

[DeepModem Mom]

4. kick for the afternoon -- sounds like a must-read

[FlemingsGhost]

5. Sure, and all that scratch Poppy is making arming the world ...

is fuckin'up his and Bar's tax bracket.

Please.

(on edit: "anonymously sourced"? Uh huh ... :eyes:)