A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies | 
 enlarge | Author: James Bamford
Creator: Ray Childs
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
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Avg. Customer Rating:  68 reviews
Sales Rank: 1273518
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.7 x 4.9 x 1
ISBN: 0739312545
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
EAN: 9780739312544
ASIN: 0739312545
Publication Date: June 8, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
James Bamford builds his case against America's intelligence agencies from the ground up, which makes for devastating reading not only for his subjects, but for anyone concerned with the nation's security or simply smart use of taxpayer dollars. Indeed, one can't help but cringe as the veteran journalist records the alarming post-Cold War floundering of the C.I.A., N.S.A., Defense Department, and succeeding administrations in the face of burgeoning terrorist threats that culminate with the attack on 9-11. Seemingly caught flatfooted by the demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S. intelligence community stumbles through the 1990s as it becomes institutionally hidebound and sluggish. During relatively peaceful times, its shortcomings, while not unnoticed, remain largely unaddressed. As Bamford sees it, with the arrival of George W. Bush, the situation goes from bad to worse. With the neocons in power, intelligence gathering is corrupted and politicized to create the grounds for going to war with Iraq. While much of what appears here has appeared earlier in works by Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, and others, Bamford pulls the loose ends together and adds new reporting to create a wide-ranging yet taut and absorbing expose of an American security apparatus that combines vast power with stunning ineptitude. --Steven Stolder
Product Description
The bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace presents his most hard-hitting book to date—a sweeping, authoritative, and fearless account of the failures of America’s intelligence agencies and the Bush administration’s calculated efforts to sell a war to the American people.
In The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford revealed the existence of the NSA, the largest, most secretive, and best-financed intelligence organization in the world. In Body of Secrets, he took readers inside the ultrasecret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds from its founding in 1952 to the end of the twentieth century. Now Bamford applies his relentless investigative drive and unparalleled access to intelligence sources to produce a headline-making book about the most pressing issues of the present day.
From the mishandling of the pre-9/11 threat to the unproven claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Bamford argues that the Bush administration has co-opted the intelligence community for its own political ends, and at the expense of American security. Bamford makes the case that the Bush administration’s Middle East policy decisions, from overthrowing Saddam to ignoring the situation of the Palestinians, are driven by long-held beliefs and goals of an elite group of conservatives inside and outside of government.
A Pretext for War homes in on the systematic weakness that led the intelligence community to ignore or misinterpret evidence of the impending terrorist attacks of 9/11—a failure rooted in the refusal to acknowledge the central role of the Palestinian cause in igniting Arab rage against the United States. Compounding the errors, the Bush administration’s immediate response to 9/11 was to call for an attack on Iraq, and it subsequently invented justifications for the preemptive war that has ultimately left the United States more vulnerable to terrorism.
A Pretext for War is an unprecedented, utterly convincing expose of the most secretive administration in history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...
 Naive October 21, 2008
How can an author describe all the pre-911 movements and the post-911 actions without knowing that the same people facilitated the triggering event? Without 911, what would be the reasoning to spark a war that had been meticulously planned? Bamford said he had no evidence to to support that the Bush White House knew about the attack beforehand, but where is the evidence to support (other than from the White House) that al Qaeda had the capacity to train the hijackers on Boeing aircraft, calculate the tactical plan and make billions of dollars worth of insider trades? Mr. Bamford, you're so close to unlocking the real truth--- all you have to do now is read Philip Marshall's False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudi Created the Post 911 World.
Your investigation is incomplete.
 Superb, Once you get by the 9/11 party line myths June 16, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
James Bamford only writes a book every so often, when he feels like he has information so important that the nation needs to know it. Thankfully so. This book is no exception. However, consider skipping Part I, which consists of the first four chapters (This is just a repeat of the party line myths about the way 19 cavemen, under the command of a guy in a cave half-way around the world, were able to do miraculous things and wreak massive destruction).
Then, we get to the meat, in Part II where Bamford finally begins telling us what we need to know. Here, he writes about the largest terrorist training camp in the world, located on 1,200 acres in North Carolina, USA, ran by the US military. Bamford writes that the training here involves blowing up busses using fertilizer and fuel oil (yes, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was educated in North Carolina). Coupled with the revelations of Part III of the book, where Bamford talks about the Office of Special Plans set up by the neocons to deceive the masses, any critical thinker can figure out what really took place on 9/11.
 A MUST READ! August 3, 2007
a MUST READ for every American...chronological facts laid out for you so that you can't ignore!
Mostly bunkum! January 27, 2007
5 out of 14 found this review helpful
One has to wade through quite a maze of disinformation in order to arrive anything of real value in this palimpsest. But, for those with extraordinary patience, there is some small modicum of value.
Bamford bores the reader at first with a very detailed, and absurd, recapitulation of the government's ridiculous tale relative to the "911" disaters, complete with impossible "cell" phone calls from high up in the atmosphere and implausible reactions on the part of government agencies that simply failed to act. Most of this seems to be intended to portray George Walker Bush as the bumbling fool that he is. We didn't need all this evidence, Mr. Bamford. That case has already been well made.
Finally, near the end, Bamford gets to the thesis: that the "911" disaster was nothing more than a pretext for the Iraq War. One wonders why the reader was taken on such a convoluted path to arrive at such an obvious conclusion. More than anything else, this book appears to be a partisan attack on the absurdity of the Bush administration and its foreign policy. A more factual account would have been more efficacious. We cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book.
What Intelligence failure? September 20, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
It seems to me that Hans Blix and Muhammed al-Baradei correctly reported to us the likely state of Iraq's strategic weaponry and warned us against a preemptive war. The republicans are also using an incorrect definition of weapons of mass distruction. The correct definition of weapons of mass distruction only counts as WMDs those weapons which have at least the potential of killing millions of people. Using this correct definition most chemical weapons and some biologicals are NOT WMDs.
I would also point out that the american attempt to produce a "shock and awe" effect was THEIR use of a terror tactic.
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