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The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina
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Average Rating:  out of 142 Reviews
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Price: $25.95
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Sale: $1.62
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Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
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EAN (European Article Number): 9781594200984
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Frank Rich
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Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
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Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
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Publication Date: 2006-09-19
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Reading Level: 352
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Description: New York Times columnist Frank Rich examines the trail of fictions manufactured by the Bush administration from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, exposing the most brilliant spin campaign ever waged. When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war. What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority was not to vanquish Al Qaeda but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention-and such was that scenario's devious brilliance that it fashioned a second war against an enemy that did not attack America on 9/11, intimidated the Democrats into incoherence and impotence, and turned a presidential election into an irrelevant referendum on macho imagery and same-sex marriage. As only he can, acclaimed New York Times columnist Frank Rich delivers a step-by-step chronicle of how skillfully the White House built its house of cards and how the institutions that should have exposed these fictions, the mainstream news media, were too often left powerless by the administration's relentless attack machine, their own post-9/11 timidity, and an unending parade of self-inflicted scandals (typified by those at The New York Times). Demonstrating the candor and conviction that have made him one of our most trusted and incisive public voices, Rich brilliantly and meticulously illuminates the White House's disturbing love affair with "truthiness," and the ways in which a bungled war, a seemingly obscure Washington leak, and a devastating hurricane at long last revealed the man-behind-the-curtain and the story that had so effectively been sold to the nation, as god-given patriotic fact.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Stop the presses: the Administration engages in P.R.! |
Date: 2008-08-31 |
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Details: My experience with this book: in short, ennui and déjà vu, not to borrow too much from the French. As to be expected by now, we get breathless reporting on how the Administration tries to spin the press and put its actions in the most favorable light possible. Imagine that. And, as to be expected, we also get the yawn-inducing laundry list of supposed sins, along with generally poor editing and overall intellectual sloppiness. Briefly:
* Blame for Bush for not being alcoholic *enough* to swear off the booze: "He was never a clinical alcoholic, never drank during the day (or every day), never needed to seek out A.A. or any other treatment" (pp 12-13).
* "already extant" stem-cell lines (p 20). Suggestion: if you're going to use words like "extant," you should make sure you know what they mean. It's a redundancy to say "already extant," since the word means "already existing."
* Blaming America for the terrorist attacks. Regarding the pre- 9-11 culture: "A decade of dreaming was coming to an end. The dream had been simple--that Americans could have it all without having to pay any price" (p 22).
ASIDE. It's funny and ironic that so many neo-Puritans are on the left, from Al Gore to Mike Bloomberg to the theater critic. People who think that a necessary adjunct to life is suffering for our sins, whether those sins be religious or secular, real or imagined, individual or institutional.
* Blaming Bush for not going back to the capital fast enough after the terrorist attack: "September 11 was the first time since the British set fire to the White House in 1814 that a president abandoned the capital for security reasons" (p 24). First, to point out the obvious, Bush was in Florida when the Mohammedans attacked. He wasn't in the White House, so couldn't have "abandoned" it. Second, if Flight 93 hadn't crashed in Pennsylvania, Bush might have been killed in Flight 93's attack.
* "The farther away Americans were from 9/11, both in time and geography, the faster it faded" (p 38). Wrong. New York was the epicenter of the attacks yet also one of quickest to become anti-Bush and anti-war.
ASIDE. It's factually-challenged statements like the one above that make me think the theater critic really needs to get out of his bubble and see the rest of the U.S. The Upper West Side is an awfully small part of America. If you're an Upper West Side liberal who thinks people west of the Hudson River are rubes and hicks, fine. Just don't pretend to speak for them.
* Enron was "the greatest single financial patron of Bush's political career" (pp 42-43). This is just a really mentally challenged factual assertion. Companies cannot donate to politicians. 2 U.S.C. §441b(a).
* "Bush had never run a successful business" (p 51). The Texas Rangers baseball franchise wasn't a successful business?
* "Well before the missed Qaeda signals of the summer of 2001..." (p 51). Like the missed "Al" (or "al" -- the book can't make up its mind) in front of "Qaeda" in that sentence?
* The 9/11 Commission supposedly concluded that Mohammed Atta's meeting in Prague with Ahmad al-Ani, the Iraqi intelligence officer, "never took place" (pp 65, 128). Wrong. The CIA director told the 9/11 Commission: "`Atta may also have traveled outside of the U.S. in early April 2001 to meet an Iraqi intelligence officer, although we are still working to corroborate this'" (9/11 Report p 386). This statement has never been retracted or modified.
* The book is smart enough not to directly claim Bush's "sixteen words" about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa were false. The book *implies* that by concentrating on the forged uranium purchase offer documents (pp 71-72, 97-100, 143), but in point of fact, as the theater critic probably knows, chances are good that Iraq *did* seek uranium from Niger. See the Senate Intelligence Committee Report of July 7, 2004 p. 42.
* "No American weapons inspectors...would ever find any weapons" of mass destruction (p 102). Wrong. In fact, about 500 chemical weapons had been found in Iraq as of early 2006, according to the National Ground Intelligence Center, the successor to the Iraq Survey Group. (U.S. House of Representatives - Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, June 21, 2006). It's true that these weapons were mostly left over form the Iran-Iraq war, and were not new weapons or weapons produced by mobile laboratories -- but it's flat-out false to say that no WMDs were found in Iraq.
* The book seems shocked that pre- 9/11 the Bush Administration was planning for a possible showdown with Saddam Hussein (pp 113, 218), but fails to mention that the overthrow of Saddam had been an explicit U.S. policy since the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Of *course* there would be pre-9/11 and pre-Iraq War discussions about overthrowing Saddam. That and the fact that he was ordering constant attacks on U.S. planes in the no-fly zones. If a country tries to shoot down your planes thousands of times, isn't that country at war with you?
* The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were supposedly "Rove minions" (p 137). Oh? Prove it. The theater critic provides some six degrees of separation stuff to back up this claim, like the fact that the Swifties' communications director once worked for a group that was bankrolled by a Bush donor (pp 139-140). That's riveting evidence all right. George Tenant would call it a slam dunk. Face it, the theater critic has squat because if Rove really had been controlling the Swifties, that would be explosive, because it is illegal for a political campaign to coordinate with an outside, 527 group. 2 U.S.C. §441a(a)(7). Which is likelier: the left has overlooked a chance to nail Rove for a crime -- or the theater critic is talking out of his hat?
* In 2004 the Rovian attack machine set out to have Kerry "literally stripped of his medals" (p 137). No, the only person who "literally stripped" John Kerry of his medals was John Kerry. He did that all by himself when he took his medals off and threw them over the White House fence.
ASIDE. "literally stripped." Wow. Literally? So Rove is just going to walk up to Kerry and strip those medals off of him?
* Supposedly Kerry was opposed to same-sex marriage (p 151). That's both true and false. It's true that by Election Day 2004 Kerry said he opposed same-sex marriage. But it's false because Kerry at one point did support it ("Kerry Signed Letter Backing Gay Marriage," USA Today, Feb 11, 2004) but later flip-flopped on the issue.
* Bush's flight suit he wore to the aircraft carrier Lincoln was a "costume" (p 156). Because the theater critic seems to be factually deficient regarding military matters, let me point out that a flight suit is required gear for flying a plane. It's a "costume" in the same sense a fire fighter's clothing and helmet is a "costume."
* The book describes the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal, and the Memogate scandal, then goes on to say: "These scandals played perfectly into the Administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundary between its reality and actual reality" (p 163). So let me get this straight: story fabrication and libel are "actual reality" and anyone trying to say otherwise has an alternative reality? Unbelievable.
* Rove supposedly was the source of the Valerie Plame leak (pp 179-180). Wrong. Actually, it was Richard Armitage. See "Hubris" by Isikoff and Corn.
* The book spends a lot of time blasting Bush for the feds' Katrina response (pp 198-205), but makes no mention of the incompetent New Orleans and Louisiana response, as well as the Posse Comitatus problem. I'm not saying that what the theater critic has to say about Bush and Katrina is factually incorrect, it's just distorted because it omits the other pieces of the picture.
* I thought the book would be too smart to fall into the Iraq / "imminent threat" trap but apparently the theater critic couldn't help himself. He implies the Administration said or believed that Saddam was an imminent threat (p 211). Wrong. Bush never said Saddam posed an "imminent threat" or imminent anything. In fact, in his 2003 State of the Union Speech, Bush said just the opposite, that we should attack Saddam *before* he became an imminent threat: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."
Overall, I have to admit that while the book breaks no new ground in any way, it *is* clever enough not to fall for some of the standard anti-Bush lies -- for example that Iraq never sought uranium from Africa or that Bush declared the war to be over in the May 1, 2003 "Mission Accomplished" speech. The theater critic does seem to be aware that there are facts other than those in his alternative universe. That's a bit of a relief at this stage, and bumps this book up to two stars. |
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Review Summary: A troublesome, truthful 'must read' about the incompetent Bush years. |
Date: 2008-07-11 |
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Details: In this day and age of sanitized/filtered news and monopolized corporate media, it is refreshing to read a 'timeline' book that delineates all the mistakes, bad schemes, and outright lies of 'Bush 2' and company, written by an astute and honest researcher and chronicler. The book presents disturbing fact after fact that should trouble every American, and is not partisan in any way. Republicans, as well as Democrats, should be at least concerned, and at most outraged at all the inept mismanagement and lies that led to the Iraqi invasion, as well as the many other incompetencies of the Bush administration. From his ignoring the message that the second tower was attacked while reading to children to 'Yellowcake' to wrongly outing Valerie Plame to the Iraq war buildup based on lies/false information to the Iraqi war mismanagement to Bush staging 'Mission Accomplished' to Abu Ghraib to not providing proper armor/combat vehicles to our soldiers to the intransigence of Katrina to the 'swiftboating' of a war hero, John Kerry (while Bush saw no combat duty) to the fast rising oil/gas prices to the brainwashing of the largely gullible and malleable American public, etc. etc. etc. This excellent book essentially 'covers all the bases' when it comes to why George Bush will be considered one of the worst, if not THE worst Presidents we've ever had. Frankly, if 'Shrub' was a corporate CEO, his rear-end would have been fired a LONG TIME AGO! How this way below average buffoon ever made it to be POTUS in the first place is the shock of the century. |
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Review Summary: Too Much Sadly True Information |
Date: 2008-06-21 |
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Details: The timeline at the end of the book ties up the case: for some unknown reason (perhaps just to get re-elected) the party in power deliberately takes the country to war. Every documented lie is exposed. Sometimes the anguish I felt reading this book caused me to put it aside and I felt despair about our miss-directed lives as citizens. |
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Review Summary: thank God for frank's honesty |
Date: 2008-04-27 |
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Details: what a truth-teller!!! if you want a refreshingly honest and accurate critique of the horrors of w's presidency, be sure to have this in your library...frankie's essays are delightfully biting... |
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Review Summary: The proof of years of BUSH Lying. |
Date: 2008-04-20 |
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Details: the spin, and Fox news propaganda always made up a quick response to any BUSH lies, and Incompetence. In this excellent book on CD's you can hear the actual truth, sans lying propaganda, and see how we were systematically deceived, manipulated, and just constantly lied to. As to IRAQ, and the whole run up to war, 'the whole damn thing was a LIE !' |
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