BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Suskind's books on the Bush Administration (“The Price of Loyalty”(2004) and “The One Percent Doctrine” (2006)) have been kept under wraps until the day of release, and this one is no different. So writing this on August 5th -- its publication date -- we haven't read it, but we suspect it's going to be another bestseller.

Why? Because Politico.com did offer some advance teasers, you know just some minor details such as that the White House committed an impeachable offense by directing the CIA to forge a letter and backdate it, falsely indicating a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and then feeding the phony correspondence to the likes of Bill O'Reilly.

And a few more teasers from Politico.com:

--Suskind contends Cheney established “deniability” for Bush as part of the vice president’s “complex strategies, developed over decades, for how to protect a president.”

“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.

“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”

--Suskind is acidly derisive of Bush, saying that he initially lost his “nerve” on 9/11, regaining it when he grabbed the Ground Zero bullhorn. Suskind says Bush’s 9 p.m. Oval Office address on the fifth anniversary was “well along in petulance, seasoned by a touch of self-defensiveness.”

“Moving on its own natural arc, the country is in the process of leaving Bush – his bullying impulse fused, permanently, with satisfying vengeance – in the scattering ashes of 9/11,” Suskind writes. “The high purpose his angry words carried after the attacks, and in two elections since, is dissolving with each passing minute.”

--Suskind writes in the acknowledgments that his research assistant, Greg Jackson, “was sent to New York on a project for the book” in September 2007 and was “detained by federal agents in Manhattan. He was interrogated and his notes were confiscated, violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights.” The author provides no further detail.

Wow, well given that Suskind's latest tome comes in at 432 pages, we expect there is some room in their for the "hope" part of the title, but it looks like more grim truth about the crimes and inner court intrigue of the Bush Administration that will likely go unpunished.

After all the documentation of the Bush Administration illegal behavior, it's like having a photo of someone murdering another person, but claiming you don't see it. (Uh, Nancy Pelosi, are you reading this?)

And as of today, Bush the Third -- John McCain -- is even with Barack Obama in the polls. And if you don't believe that McCain will operate in the same dark shadows as Cheney, think again. In fact, McCain's a bigger hot head than Cheney and not much brighter than Bush -- a dangerous combination.

So, Suskind's book, following on the heels of Jane Mayer's tour de force on the Bush torture regime, joins the ranks of non-fiction documentation of crimes that were never prosecuted as well as background on how the Cheney-Bush presidency got away with shredding the Constitution and violating the rule of law.

But, yes, according to the publisher's must of the book does spend time offering role models of hope around the world. But don't expect to find any currently in the White House.

From the publisher of "The Way of the World":

From Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation's struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault–line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today's shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.

In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of "The Armageddon Test"—a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world's nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons–grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency.

While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate—and often daring—brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan boy, a Holocaust survivor's son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she's been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions—human solutions—to so much that has gone wrong.

For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope—along with the moral clarity and earned optimism—at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS