New Review: Countdown To Terror

The following is a brief excerpt from a review posted on PopandPolitics.com:

Iran is the new Iraq -- just listen to the rhetoric coming out of Washington or browse the bevy of available titles in your local chain bookstore. Currently, there is a stampede of authors attempting to persuade the reading public that Iran is either going to blow the whole world up tomorrow or that they can be reasoned with and the only on-going threat to global security is George W. Bush. That’s the double-edged sword of the free American marketplace; there’s a place on the shelf for every opinion, regardless of how close to the truth it actually is.
There is enough spin and jingoism in the American marketplace to drag the average book consumer into a whirlpool of doubt and confusion. Almost every book I pick up seems to be well researched and highly footnoted, but one would be naïve to believe that these authors are above reproach when penning their individual message. They’ve all got a dog in the hunt somewhere so one has to take each of these titles with some degree of skepticism. And in the end, the reader is wholly subjected to the whims and fancies of the author’s narrative.

“Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America…And How the CIA Has Ignored It,” by Congressman Curt Weldon, Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is a different animal entirely. Apparently what Congressman Weldon has done here is compiled a litany of declassified intelligence from a source high up in the ranks of Iran and presented it for public consumption.

This isn’t a pile of documents and interviews re-written into a form of a narrative like a Bob Woodward book. This book is literally a stack of intelligence papers presented nearly unmolested in their original forms. Essentially, outside of some narrative explanations, an introduction, and a conclusion full of recommendations, it’s a series of faxes from a man code-named Ali bound together and published by Regnery.

Continued...