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Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack |  | Author: Marc A. Thiessen
Publisher: Regnery Press
List Price: $29.95
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as of 7/30/2010 10:54 CDT details
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New (36) Used (26) from $7.11
Seller: spry_books
Rating:  88 reviews
Sales Rank: 6600
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 376
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 1596986034
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.1273
EAN: 9781596986039
ASIN: 1596986034
Publication Date: January 18, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was tasked to write President George W. Bush’s 2006 speech explaining the CIA’s interrogation program and why Congress should authorize it. Few know more about these CIA operations than Thiessen, and in his new book, Courting Disaster, he documents just how effective the CIA’s interrogations were in foiling attacks on America, penetrating al-Qaeda’s high command, and providing our military with actionable intelligence. Thiessen also shows how reckless President Obama has been in shutting down the CIA’s program and releasing secret documents that have aided our enemies. Courting Disaster proves:
How the CIA program thwarted specific deadly attacks against the U.S.
Why “enhanced interrogation” was not torture by any reasonable legal or moral standard
How the information gained by “enhanced interrogation” could not have been acquired any other way
How President Obama’s actions since taking office have left America much more vulnerable to attack
In chilling detail, Thiessen reveals how close the terrorists came to striking again, how intelligence gained from “enhanced interrogation” repeatedly stymied their plots, and how President Obama’s dismantling of this CIA program is inviting disaster for America.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 88
 Great Info July 4, 2010
Hello
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I think a great indicator of how powerful this book is are the ratings it has received on Amazon. If you look, they are all 5 stars or 1 star. People absolutely love it or downright despise it. No humdrum book could be so polarizing, and the comments make it painfully evident which side, left or right, of the political spectrum the reader is. I think it is an outstanding book, but it is sad what it reveals about what the priorities of the people in charge are.
The title says it all. June 11, 2010
Scroogey (California)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
The title says it all. Now read the book to discover exactly how the CIA kept America safe and how Barack Obama is inviting the next terrorist attack on our soil.
 Too Partison to enjoy reading. May 31, 2010
Bashir H. Abdi
3 out of 11 found this review helpful
The book does not offer any solutions other than finger pointing and the usual bully condescending right-wing rhetorics.But one does exactly expect more from an author who used to be a Bush speech writer.Treats to look forward to in the book ;A dish of sedate below average intelligence,a style of writing that borders 2nd grade level, and a general lack of civility in that self satisfied tone of voice, that rebukes anything that is not conservative or a loyal fan of the tea party.
For Open-Minded Readers Only May 13, 2010
Charles Martel (United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
It's too bad that my friends who bought into the left-wing narrative on this topic will probably never read this book. If they read it with an open mind, they would learn that President Bush's CIA interrogation program was carefully designed and executed with the advice of legal counsel to stay within the law, that no captives were physically harmed by the program, and that the information gained by the program saved literally thousands of innocent lives. None of this is speculation -- it is documented. The open-minded reader would also learn that the program was not only legal and expedient, but morally right. Yes, morally right. The author gives an excellent analysis of the "just war" tradition and its application to this situation. Of course, we shouldn't be reading this book. In order for interrogation to work, the enemy must not know the limits and parameters of the program. When Obama shut down the program and declassified hundreds of documents intending to harm the former administration, he inadvertently gave the enemy information needed to defeat us. He also gave us the opportunity to learn the truth. Those who could not defend the program could now speak openly and a book this detailed could be written. The open-minded reader will also learn that the United States is dramatically less safe as a nation the longer Obama is in office, thanks to his ideology and naivety. Left-wing lawyers are also the target of well-deserved criticism in this book for foolishly fighting to extend full legal rights to enemy combatants committed to killing innocent Americans. Thanks to the dismantling of our defenses by those subscribing to this leftist ideology, the question is not "if" we will be attacked again, but "when." I was shocked to learn that Obama actually admitted to the CIA that his actions have made his job and the job of the CIA to protect us from further attacks more difficult! This admission may well haunt him someday. He probably thinks this is okay because he mistakenly believes that the terrorists want to harm us in response to something we did wrong (like the CIA interrogation program, for example). The open-minded reader would learn that this view is utterly and demonstrably wrong. There is so much confusion about this topic in the leftist-dominated media, it is deeply refreshing to read a clear, detailed, and well-reasoned explanation of the importance of a robust interrogation program.
"A pack of falsehoods." May 4, 2010
WTL (California)
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
That's how Malcolm Nance describes Thiessen's book. Nance was a SERE instructor for four years (in intelligence for 20) and waterboarded or supervised the waterboarding of hundreds of American military to prepare them for the worst if they were captured. He also describes the waterboard platform the Americans used as taken directly from the one used by Pol Pot. In an interview in Harper's, he calls Thiessen "a fool of the highest magnitude if he thinks he knows anything about waterboarding." Thiessen's so-called classified access was "from people with an agenda of justifying what was done," which makes Thiessen merely "a court stenographer for war criminals rather than a person with any real claim of expertise."Anyone who saw him get taken apart by John Stewart would know this pudgy keyboard warrior would fall apart a few minutes into waterboarding, and indeed Vance offers to put Thiessen through the CIA's list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and guarantees that within an hour Thiessen would give him a "written admission that waterboarding is torture and that his book is a pack of falsehoods." It's disgusting enough that Thiessen could write such a book based in his own ignorance and on his amoral defense of torture - Vance notes that thousands of American POWs suffered and died resisting the torture practices Thiessen promotes, torture the US took "from the Russians, the Communist Chinese, the North Koreans, the North Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge." What's just as bad is that he is making so much money off this disgusting book and that so many people are buying it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 88
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