|
| Takeover | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Category: EBooks
List Price: $11.99
Buy New: $9.59
You Save: $2.40 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 11248
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
ASIN: B000SF9ZP8
Publication Date: September 5, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Turnabout isn't fair play September 5, 2007
33 out of 58 found this review helpful
I haven't read it yet, as it's not released, but heard the author being interviewed on NPR. An interesting point of the book is that all the power concentrated in the presidency under the Bush administration may become a threat to the same politicos when a new administration is elected. In other words, as a private citizen Dick Cheney can be arrested by a new US president, without a warrant, without cause, without an attorney, and for an indefinite period of time. Al Gore makes a similar analogy in his new book, Assault on Reason, asking if it's okay for the US to torture prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention, then is it equally okay for foreign powers to torture American prisoners of war? Both books argue that a power grabbing imperial president is a threat to democracy and to freedom everywhere.
 Savage's book founders on 911 issue March 28, 2008
29 out of 49 found this review helpful
This Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Charlie Savage should have received five stars. I give it only two. To learn why -- read on.
Savage is a good writer and his trenchant analysis of how the neocons have nearly destroyed our Constitutional system is basically correct. His story is also important and needs to be told.
The problem is Savage's naive acceptance of the official yarn about 9/11. In the very first chapter Savage displays his personal ignorance when he reviews the events in the White House bunker -- and gets it wrong. What is incredible is that Savage didn't bother to research this himself. It appears that he simply accepted as bible the version of events reported by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post.
There is no excuse for this lapse of critical thought.
The problem is that the version of 911 reported by Woodward in his 2002 series was largely fabricated -- a lie. It does not reflect what actually happened. It was fabricated for a reason: because Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta just happened to be present in the bunker with Cheney on 911 and witnessed what transpired.
Check out Mineta's testimony before the 911 Commission in May 2003 -- and you will discover what I am referring to. Mineta places Cheney in the bunker as early as 9:20 am. What is more, he actually overheard Cheney give the treasonous order to stand down -- as Flight 77 was approaching Washington. Mineta told how a young man, probably a Secret service staffer, came in and warned of the approaching plane. "It's 50 miles out" the young man said. Then it was "thirry miles out" -- then "ten miles out." The young man asked Cheney if the orders still stand. Cheney shouted: "Of course they still stand...Have you heard any different?" Mineta told the commission this was Flight 77 -- no mistake about the ID of the plane. In short, his testimony was incredibly incriminating. No doubt, is why there is not one word about it in the 911 Commission Report.
For this reason -- it was obvious in the immediate aftermath of 911, long before Mineta testified before the commission, that his presence in the bunker posed a grave problem for Cheney. The White House had little reason to think it could count on Mineta's loyalty. He was a civil servant, after all, not a neocon---the only Democrat in Bush's cabinet. It is now clear that the White House responded to this "threat" by proactively attempting to head off trouble. How? By rewriting history. What else?
Late in 2001 the well-known journalist Bob Woodward was invited to conduct a series of interviews about September 11, as seen through the eyes of the president and his staff. Woodward (a glory hound) was only too eager to oblige. As we know, he thereafter served as court historian. The result, beginning in January 2002, was a series of retrospective articles in the Washington Post about 9/11.
This is the version of 911 history that Savage relied on for the first chapter of his book.
How could Savage be so naive? In fact, Woodward simply wrote what he was told. His series in the Post presented a White House-friendly version of events. No surprise that one of the stories Woodward recounted was the famous episode in the bunker. In Woodward's redacted version, however, Cheney is the man of the hour who rises to the press of terrible events. The same young man approaches the VP and warns about the incoming airliner. But, of course, in this revised history the timeline has been pushed back: Now it is almost 10 am -- and the plane is Flight 93, not Flight 77. Now the plane is 80 miles out, not 50.
There is another BIG difference. This time instead of a stand down -- it is a shoot down order. When the young man says, "There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?" Cheney responds by giving the difficult command to shoot down the plane. But the young man hesitates. As narrated by Woodward the tension in the room mounts. The plane is closing fast and is now only 60 miles out. The young man repeats the question and again Cheney gives the command. But the young man still hesitates. "Does the order still stand?" he blurts out. Cheney finally snaps and says, "Of course it does!"
Woodward's revised version of 911 is more colorful, but there is a problem. It is a fabrication -- a complete lie. In fact, it deviates just as sharply from the official narrative presented in the 9/11 Commission Report as it does from Mineta's account, since at no time on September 11 did Flight 93 approach anywhere near as close as 60 miles to the White House. This crucial detail is the fly on the windowpane that exposes the fraud.
Someone please inform Charlie Savage that he got his 911 history all wrong -- backwards. There is no excuse for this. He is a fine writer. It is simply incomprehensible that Savage -- a strong critic of the neocons -- would swallow hook, line, and sinker their version of the 911 "attack." If half of what Savage reports in his book is true -- and I have no doubt that much more than half is true -- then the neocons are easily capable of murdering 3,000 Americans in a false flag attack on 911 to vastly increase the power of the White House and catapult America into two unnecessary wars.
This is exactly what they did -- and shame on Mr Savage for not figuring it out. He's lucky I didn't give him one star. So readers - please beware. You must view the analysis in TAKEOVER through a critical lens, making allowances for Savage's failure to comprehend who was behind 9/11. There is no question that Cheney and Rumsfeld and others were personally involved in the attack.
Awful February 7, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
Horrible. Disgusting. I was filled with repulsion to the depths of my being, in reading this book.
Savage makes an exquisite case. He goes through, point by point, in excellently written prose, showing all the ways that Bush and Cheney have subverted the constitution. He doesn't do this just referring to obscure aspects. He doesn't just present opinions. He looks at the core of the constitution, at the Separation of Powers, and how Bush Cheney et.al. have worked to remove that from the basis of our country. Savage gives a huge amount of meticulous evidence, albeit written in a style that makes it feel like a story.
But it is a story worthy of the great Shakespearean or Greek tragedies. This is not a case where Cheney made a mistake, or misunderstood something. He has been working since his time under Nixon to expand the power of the President. It's not just a case where there's a disagreement on the interpretation of the constitution. He truly believes that Congress should have no oversight over the President, that the President should make laws, and that this was what the Founding Fathers intended. Far worse, over the last seven years, he's enacted his beliefs, so that they are now the custom of the land.
And then it got worse. This belief on the independence of the President, the "Unitary Presidential Theory", is believed by only a small minority of scholars. Most think it only slightly better than the gift your dog gives you when you take it on a walk. (I'm sorry. That was unfair. Dogs leave behind far higher quality.) But now, two Supreme Court Justices were found to believe this idea as well. So Busheney have worked to undermine the future of our country as well, inserting their viscous beliefs into the very top of our court system, that they might slowly win others to their cult of power.
A friend counseled me not to read this book, for it would just make me angry. He was right. But I think we need to be aware of what's going on. Where we once had a country built on the rule of law, with at the time the finest document devoted to freedom and equality in history, we now have only tattered cloth and shattered dreams. We have two men ruling us, devoted to power and control, with no compassion within them. And we have decades ahead of us, to work to correct the destruction they have wrought on our country and the world. I do not believe in my life I have seen a greater example of what it means to be a traitor. If you can stomach it, read this book, to see the work ahead of us, and the shame we now collectively own. For I do not believe in my life I will see us truly healed from these past seven years.
"Takeover" October 8, 2007
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
Terrific book.meticulously researched.70 pages of "footnotes"Shows how the two presidents have relentlessly,almost every day,destroyed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.The book will help you see it happening before your very eyes.For example,the upcoming attorney general is the judge who gave Bush the right to arrest American citizens on Americal soil and classify them as "Enemy Combatents".Therefor denying them any rights.No trial by jury.Can be held forever without charges.Can be sent by"rendition" to countries like Syria who have no rules about torture.Both sides of the aisle say this guy will breeze through the confirmation process.Send a copy of the book to your congress persons.
Warning: Not more than one chapter per day! November 6, 2007
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
As a doctor, I should not allow you to read this book in one sitting lest your cynicism and despair find nothing left to weep about. Nope, I'm not being dramatic. Savage moves inexorably through the past generation of presidents, describing in a horribly clear clinical presentation what is happening to our freedom through the actions of those who have only the best of intentions. Are you listening, Mr Bush? Of course, if we remain good little soldiers in this unfathomable war on Terror, no questions and only gratitude, right? (How better to fight Terror than use Terror? What happened to NOT becoming as our tormentors?) And worst of all, some two-thirds through the book, just when you expect some hero to arise who will stand up for what we are supposed to believe in - what we were taught to believe in when our teachers told us we were "the leaders of the 21st century" - you realize there is no hero. There are just plain folks, slogging their way through one supposed emergency after another, making policy based on the poorest diagnoses, wondering (if we are lucky and they are honest) if their therapeutic interventions will make democracy safer. (Does Mrs Cheney murmur that to Mr Cheney after each kiss, even after the 6 o'clock news?) Even the best of us - the bright boys and girls who went to the "good" schools - the Yoo's and the Addington's and their buddies - just your usual schlemiehls and schlemozzles, faithful to the war, faithless to each other. Thanks, Mr Savage: you have made the world a better place for your work; no safer, just better, God damn it. Read the book. You must.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
