Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When Frank Rich sits at his type writer people in the White House shudder. And with good reason, for the New York Times columnist skewers them every Sunday with a combination of able research and wry wit. People taking pleasure in his Sunday columns will delight in this book. Those who detest him will likely have an aneurysm. Already, as can be seen among the reviews for this book, GOP attacks have either taken out their long knives to stab or tried to dismiss Rich as just another Bush Hater. Such ad hominem attacks fail to reply to the care with which Rich approaches the topic or the strength of his argument. Seeing the Bush White House at its heart as arrogant and disdaining the constraints of tradition and law, the book traces a parade of failures and attempts to explain how time and again the administration can distract the American people from reality. In this Rich saves his greatest venom for his own peers in the media in general and at his own paper in particular. Why did they not challenge the White House when it made charges, often demonstrably false, such as Dick Cheney's recent claims never to have claimed Saddam was involved in 9/11? How did they give the government a pass on Afghanistan even as the US began shifting troops to Iraq leaving that country on the precipice of falling back into the hands of the Taliban? Remember how every prisoner at Gunatanamo was "the worst of the worst," and only now we know many innocent people remain in a legal limbo, turned over by bounty hunters in Pakistan to the US military, and even now remaining in captivity because the White House is loath to admit its mistake? Or how come the media does not question why terrorists become the most active in the summer and fall of even years? At its heart, Rich blames the media's desire for access, its disinterest in analysis, and its fear of being painted as not patriotic. Since 9/11 the White House has succeeded in silencing those who offer any competing narrative to its own (remember Bill Maher's suggestion that we're deluding ourselves if we think cowards fly airplanes into buildings?) more interested in controlling the story than winning the war. As with the excellent history of Iraq "Fiasco" Bush partisans will not give this work a read, nor even consider the possibility of fault, let alone bad intentions. Even honorable men who shed blood in war for the country such as Senator's McCain, Graham, and Warner, find themselves under attack because disagreement for many of my fellow Americans now seems synonymous with betrayal. Those who reflexively revile works such as this one should take a deep breath and hear out his argument. A dose of his rational outrage would be a tonic for us all.