Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Hardcover)

On 25 January 2001, Clarke proposed 'urgently' a plan to eliminate Al Qa'ida, but the Bush government took no notice because it was fixated on Iraq. Clarke consistently pointed out to them that there had been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against the USA since 1993. (Last September, Bush at last admitted that there was 'no evidence that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks'.) Clarke's first Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism was on 4 September 2002, just seven days before the attacks on the USA; he first briefed the President on terrorism on the day of the attack.

The day after, Clarke went to the White House expecting " to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq."

He writes, "Many thought that the Bush administration was doing a good job of fighting terrorism when, actually, the administration had squandered the opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda and instead strengthened our enemies by going off on a completely unnecessary tangent, the invasion of Iraq. A new al Qaeda has emerged and is growing stronger, in part because of our own actions and inactions. It is in many ways a tougher opponent than the original threat we faced before September 11 and we are not doing what is necessary to make America safer from that threat."

The war in Afghanistan should have been a rapid search-and-destroy mission by US troops on the ground against the terrorists. Instead, bin Laden, his deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Mullah Omar, the Taliban's leader, all escaped. The Taliban was not eliminated; they are rebuilding their forces.

Attacking Iraq made us all less secure and strengthened the radical Islamic terrorist movement. There were far more terrorist attacks in the thirty months since 9/11 than in the thirty months before it: there have been jihadist atrocities in Russia, Tunisia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey and other countries. The US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute concluded that the attack on Iraq was 'a strategic error of the first magnitude'. Clarke concludes, "Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country."

Bush and Blair attacked the wrong target when they attacked Iraq not Al Qa'ida. Similarly now, the 'left', the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, are all attacking the wrong target when they downplay the terrorist threat and tell us that the BNP is the greatest threat to us. But the BNP, whatever else it does, does not blow up large numbers of workers across the world.

Al Qa'ida is an immediate and serious threat to Britain and other countries. Its supporters run websites recruiting jihadists in Britain for training; they solicit money from British fundamentalists for terrorist front groups, and they are organising cells in Britain. Clarke's fascinating and revealing book alerts us to real dangers, which Bush and Blair are making worse.

As a two-tour Vietnam veteran, trained journalist, author and proud American I am saddened by Richard Clarke's revelations. I desperately wanted to believe in President Bush. However, the author is one of our nation's best and brightest terrorism professionals. Subsequently, Clarke's book offers highly credible insights to a terrible period in American history.

Ultimately, one must decide who has the most credibility. The author...or the President of the United States. The people of the United States now have the opportunity to voice its opinion in the upcoming elections. Consequently, Richard Clarke has done the nation a great service...he has confirmed what others who left this government have said...that the Bush White House has its own secret agenda and will viciously attack anyone who disagrees. Highly, highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

What is so important, and so very clear from the book, is that:

1. The Bush Administration was actually less concerned, and devoted substantially less resources and attention, to combating Al Qaeda, than the Clinton Administration. While Clinton's efforts to fight Al Qaeda were not sufficient to prevent 9/11, Bush further diminished the government's efforts.

2. The Bush Administration made a catastrophic mistake in launching an unnecessary and counterproductive war against Iraq while failing to complete the job in Afghanistan or otherwise focus sufficiently on Al Qaeda after 9/11.

Prior to 9/11, neither administrations did what would have been necessary to prevent the attacks, and neither would have had the political support to do so. After 9/11 however, the Bush administration did have the political support, both domestically and internationally, to do whatever was reasonably necessary, but squandered that support on the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place, for reasons that were preconceived prior to 9/11.

These truths are so clear that they are beyond reasonable refutation, which is doubtless why the Bush administration has undertaken personal attacks on Mr. Clarke rather than any refutation of his book on its merits. With the domestic economic policies of the administration so obviously a failure, there is no rationale for the Bush administration except its supposed wisdom and skill in fighting terrorism. This book demolishes that rationale