Richard Clerke reveals the shortcomings of the Bush administration to tackle the terror issue. According to Clerke, Bush did not allow him to breaf on al-Qaeda just weeks before 9/11. The Bush administration was preoccupied with Saddam even before 9/11, plotting to overthrow his regime. Even though Al Gore conceded that 9/11 would have happened under his watch, the Bush administration is culpable for underestimating the threat posed by al-Qaeda.

The Bush administration made use of 9/11 to launch the Iraq war. Saddam has been a constant threat to the Bush dynasty. Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam was determined to retaliate against George H.W.Bush. Saddam was a real threat to the Bush dynasty but not for the US. Bush had to bend over backwards to garner support for the war by fixing pre-war intelligence.

Moreover, Bush declared just after 9/11,"I don't care about international law. We have to kick some butt." Bush was determined to attack Iraq from this moment without any evidence that incriminates Iraq. The row over U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 to authorize the Iraq war is another evidence that the Bush administration is reluctant to comply with internatinal norms by taking the go-it-alone stance.

His book is shocking and revealing, and should be worrisome for all Americans. It underscores how ill-prepared and in some cases ill-equipped the country was in recognizing a most dangerous threat to its economy, financial markets and the global economic power of its multinationals. It's sobering to read that institutions Americans take for granted to protect them and their way of life from traumatic events are not omnipotent.

The Clinton Treasury didn't want to push hard on investigating Saudi financing of the al Qaeda terrorist network. CIA Director George Tenet refused to arm an unmanned Predator aircraft to try to take out Osama Bin Laden (though Clarke also believes that the United States might not have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington even if Bin Laden had been assassinated). Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft did not place counterterrorism as a top priority for the Justice Department. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch "opposed expanding organized crime wiretap provisions to terrorists," says Clarke.

In short, to Clarke, some of the U.S. response to the terrorists was Keystone Cops, especially before 9/11. The U.S.S. Cole, the destroyer attacked while in port at Aden in Yemen, never would have been sent to "a vipers' nest" if the Defense Department had inquired whether it was safe, he charges.

The revelations in this book about Tenet's inadequate response to the terrorism threat, in addition to what he subsequently said at the 9/11 Commission hearings, suggest that Tenet's resignation is long overdue. I am astounded that Tenet did not pass on his own staff's discovery that an Arab terrorist was taking flying lessons.

The war on Iraq strengthened al Qaeda and helped it grow throughout the world. If the U.S. does not get totally focused on a tenacious counterterrorism policy, Clarke predicts "a Taliban-like government in Pakistan armed with nuclear weapons, supporting a similar satellite nation next door in Afghanistan and promoting al Qaeda-like ideology and terror throughout the world; in the Gulf, a nuclear-armed Iran, promoting its own version of Hezbollah-style ideology; and Saudi Arabia, after the fall of the House of Saud, creating its own version of a fourteenth-century theocratic republic."