No comments about Human Rights and Non-Discrimination in the 'War on Terror' (Oxford Monographs in International Law).

1 comments about The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam And the Extreme Right.

1. I ,by chance encountered this book in a B&N bookstore in Ohio(!)(?).If I was an extremist I would force the american congress members to read the book and wake up.Very much needed info about the screaming ignorance of american foreign politics.the american public needs to inform itself in order to deserve the (very fickle)idea of "Democracy".I highly recommend this very balanced collection of writings ,that makes it possible for the concerned american voter to get more confused and find it necessary to finally pick up Said's & Chomsky's books.I personally always look for books of these 3 writers but let me just add to that list ,Norman G. Finkelstein(Beyond Chutzpah)and Loren J. Samons II (Whats wrong w/Democracy?)

2 comments about The WHOLE Truth About the U.S. War on Terror.

1. How NOBODY has written a review for this book. Maybe no one's bought it. Sounds like another liberal crying about war & how bad it is.
   
   I agree that the Iraq War is maybe "mis-managed" but honestly, who has a degree in War Management? (Although the intellectual enlightened at our Universities should be able to create one, eh?)
   
   About the book, didn't read it, I probably won't, and wouldn't recommend it to someone I DIDN'T like. Just sounds too much like a sniveling, "wah-wah" conspiracy Theorist that hates America but loves to live here in freedom to shout his mouth off.



2. If you are into conspiracies and believe that the US government is behind every little itsy bitsy problem in the world - along with the big ones like the Sept 11 terrorist attack on America by bin Laden - then this is your book.
   
   You'll find all the twisted bizarre logic you will ever need to decide that if there's a problem, then it's caused by the vast and all powerful underground secret and evil US government. That if the US isn't doing the terrorizing, then the terrorists are either working for or caused by the US government.
   
   The "whole truth" is that this book is extraordinarily out of touch with reality. I find it hard to comprehend that the author actually believes what he wrote.

No comments about Game Without End: State Terror and the Politics of Justice.

No comments about Radical Islam and International Security: Challenges and Responses (Besa Studies in International Security).

5 comments about Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus.

1. When journalists start to write history--beware. There will be some limitations. Those are apparent here in the method--what was learned by two journalists assigned to Chechnya for a 3 year period, approximately, in the mid-1990s. The book was published in 1998.
   
   Despite those method weaknesses, and others pointed out by other reviewers, I recommend this book for a few reasons. It is a harkening back to the time of Yeltsin, whom it seemed the American administrations were very fearful of living without--now we have some history with Mr. Putin. And, we know the epilogue is continued problems with the Chechens, and Islam. In this regard the book is a very readable prologue to what we faced after 9/11, and provides some historical background. It doubt that 1 of 100 Americans could find Chechnya on a map, yet this is part of the world region that will determine the fate of the world.
   
   Highly recommended for intelligence and counterintelligence enthusiasts, because you have to learn a new way of thinking to understand this conflict. It isn't the Cold War, and it isn't the Holocaust.



2. When the Soviet Union imploded, the Chechens made a bolt for freedom. Russia has launched two major wars to bring the rebels to heel since then. This action-packed book describes the first campaign, the 1994-96 war, which caused 60,000 fatalities and a host of human rights violations. The second one is continuing and the death toll has already surpassed that of Russia's first, failed campaign. Human rights violations are today in Chechnya as common place as they were in the first campaign. This seminal book therefore remains relevant to trying to understand one of the world's most violent regions.
   The authors are two journalists who spent almost a year in the killing fields of Chechnya collecting their research material in between dodging the bombs and the bullets. Although the book focuses on the main antagonists of the first war, including Boris Yeltsin and Johkar Dudayev, the late charismatic leader of the Chechens, it also performs several other useful functions. It traces the origins of the enmity between the Russians and the Chechens back to Russia's imperial expansions in the 1830s. Stalin's ruthless deportations of 1944 are also given their due prominence; Stalin believed the Chechens collaborated with the Nazis and deported all of them from the northern Caucasus. Although Khrushchev later allowed them to return, the Chechens have retained a deep loathing of Moscow ever since. There is no love lost here.
   Moscow is in no financial or moral shape to buy the Chechens off. It has instead opted for a military solution. However, a military solution calls for disciplined assault troops, the type of soldiers who pushed the Nazis back from Moscow to Berlin. This is all the more so when faced with the caliber of resistance the Chechens present. However, Russia's armed forces no longer possesses such men. The army's officers and men are an undisciplined, under-paid hotchpotch of young conscripts and incompetent malcontents, who have no burning desire to die for Mother Russia.
   The authors draw attention to the human rights violations Russia's conscript army routinely commits. Indiscriminate killings, kidnappings and robberies are daily occurrences. The Russians are more interested in collecting bribes than in fighting the war to its conclusion. This allows the rebels the necessary degree of latitude to pursue their objectives. They operate in shifts, alternating between living as civilians and as partisans. There is no evidence in this book that this unhappy cycle will end in the near future. The Chechens are geared up for the long haul.
   Stalin, who crushed the Chechens in his own brutal way, was well aware of the Chechens' military prowess. He once famously quipped that a handful of Chechens would be enough to defeat Hitler. When the current war in Chechnya ends, there might only be a handful of them left. But they will have exacted a terrible price on their Russian enemies. Putin cannot resort to Stalin's total terror tactics. He must deal with outside pressures. Although Western concerns about human rights abuses are one of these, there is another which the authors could possibly have spent more time discussing.
   Chechnya has wider dimensions, chief of which are the region's growing adherence to Islamic fundamentalism and the need of the Russians for a safe southern underbelly. When the Soviets rashly invaded Afghanistan in 1979, they initiated a process that led to the destruction of their own empire. That process is continuing most forcefully in the Caucasus where ethnic and sectarian tensions abound. Russia has few allies in the area. There are the hard-pressed Armenians and the Georgians, who are obsessed with their own problems. And there are not many more.
   Although Russia must pacify the Caucasus, this book does not offer them much hope. Quite the opposite in fact. The forces of history seem to be on the side of the Islamic fighters in Chechnya and neighboring countries. However unpalatable that may be to some of us, it is the conclusion of this book and of any impartial adjudication of the evidence seeping out from Russia's latest unwinnable war.



3. Shortly after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, the recently formed and tenuously stable Russia became embroiled in a new kind of war; the war in Chechnya.
   
   With the breakup of the Soviet Union, a number of former Soviet territories made a grab for independence. Some of the states achieved sovereignty with little bloodshed. Others faced the full might of the Russian political and military fist attempting to prevent succession. Such was the case of Chechnya.
   
   Gall and de Waal, both journalists having covered Russia and its provinces for many years, have created an excellent work examining the causes, costs and repercussions of the Chechen War. The book does a superb job of providing historical background on the region and people of Chechnya, their long history of independence, and their many battles with Russian authority.
   
   The story then moves to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent instability and lack of effectiveness of the new Russian government. Out of this instability and inefficiency emerged a Chechen move towards independence, an act unacceptable to Moscow. The result was a bloody guerrilla war between the Russian military and the Chechen separatists. Both sides suffered innumerable casualties, and the financial cost of the conflict still ravages the region.
   
   The authors rely on innumerable materials garnered from media sources and personal interviews with major players, both Soviet and Chechen, from the conflict. The resulting text is both concise and readable, providing an objective look at the war in Chechnya from the eyes of the Russian political and military leaders as well as the guerrillas and Chechen politicos. Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus serves as an excellent source for gaining an understanding into the Chechen conflict.



4. If you're interested in the first war in Chechnya everything's here including the holocaust against the Chechen people. It ends in 1998 before Putin's KGB war and the Chechens' descent into terrorism. If your pro-Russian this book is not for you. The writers are not pro-Yeltsin either. (Who is? He was just a drunk.)



5. I was thinking of giving this book four stars because it is outdated (the book published in 1998, but probably written before April 1997, as the epilogue indicates), but I can't hold this against the book. All books become outdated at one point.
   
   In any event, I've given it five stars largely because of its inside account. I love the fact that the authors were on the ground, seeing things with their own eyes. They also met Dudayev, Basayev, and other critical characters. Their quoting of these people made the book much more enjoyable because they present the views of integral figures (on both the Russian and Chechen sides).
   
   It does start out slow with coverage on the history of the Chechens. Some people may not be interested in what a teip is. If you don't care, skip to the parts on the conflict.
   
   The book is very lively. It covers almost every drop of a bomb or attack from a first person perspective, though, realistically, it couldn't have all been first person. It is very detailed and the gruesome nature of war is well covered.

3 comments about Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes & State Crimes in the War on Terror (Critical Issues in Crime and Society).

1. Hate crimes and state crimes? Puuuuhhllleeezz. Another author with BDS (that's Bush Derangement Syndrome, look it up at Wikipedia) sees an imaginary loss of rights and imaginary hate crimes around every corner like a wino with the DTs sees pink elephants. We still have a constitution friend (no thanks to the left). If you have flown much since 9-11 you know it is NOT the Arab males 18 to 50 years old who get pulled out of line for secondary screening, even though more than 95% of all planes hijacked, ever, were hijacked by Arab males 18 to 50 years old. The PC police are still out there, and they aren't picking on the Arabs. Another good reason not to buy this book is it's $68 price. Sheesh.



2. Scapegoats of September 11: Hate Crimes & State Crimes in the War on Terror is an essential title for any college-level collection on criminology and social sciences: it comes from a criminologist who argues that the 'war on terror' is a political charade which produces scapegoats for emotional relief. These scapegoats were not involved in the attacks - but have been targets: displaced aggression is the focus of a hard-hitting title on an unresolved social issue.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



3. I have not read this book, nor do I intend to. In my own academic research using Google Books, I came across one page in this book which truly highlights the academic dishonesty of this self-described criminologist. I have served in the Global War on Terrorism as a United States Marine currently ranking as a Corporal in the reserve. Perhaps if Mr. Welch had actually served his country in a more direct fashion, rather than reading second-hand accounts and inaccurately paraphrasing their contents to fulfill his perception of events, his knowledge of this country's conduct in waging war on her enemies is in fact not reflective of the vitriol found upon the pages of his book and in its title.
   
   I am not a criminologist and therefor will not attack Welch's criminology expertise, but will instead condemn Welch on his flagrant disregard of the facts regarding an honorable United States Marine, Lieutenant Ilario Pantano (retired). I haven't the expertise to evaluate Mr. Welch's knowledge of criminology, but as a Marine, as a student of honorable warrior culture, I can condemn Mr. Welch on his honor-- or rather, his lack thereof.
   
   Many of the facts I discuss can be found in Pantano's book, 'Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy', and can verified by the legal records of the Judge Advocate General's office of 2nd Mar Div, Camp Lejeune, NC. 2nd Lt Pantano was, by all accounts of his superiors and those who served under him (excepting a Sgt Coburn), an outstanding infantry officer and United States Marine. Lieutenant Pantano originally served as an enlisted scout sniper before being honorably discharged. Following his exit from the Marine Corps, he studied at NYU and became a financial trader in New York, his hometown. Following September 11, Pantano, in true warrior fashion, aggressively fought to reenter the Marine Corps, even telling a recruiter that he would accept a demotion in rank (to Corporal) in order to get back into the fight. Pantano was eventually commissioned and entered service in Iraq as a platoon commander (2nd Lt).
   
   Mr. Welch, on page 111 of his book, writes (quoted without permission of the author, publisher or copyright holder, only for the purposes of this review and constituting Fair Use under United States copyright law):
   
   'Similarly, Second Lieutenant Ilario Pantano was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in a murder case of two Iraqis who were shot in the back with as many as 60 rounds of ammunition. On April 15, 2004, Pantano unloaded two magazines from an M-16 rifle then left a sign reading "No Better Friend-No Worse Enemy" as a warning to other Iraqis to stay away from the insurgency, a message that was likened to a "head stake." Pantano claims that it was an act of self-defense. The hearing officer wrote in a report that Pantano used poor judgement in the incident but his behavior did not constitute a crime" (DeSantis 2005a, A10; see www.defendthedefenders.org). Major General Richard A. Huck, commander of the Second Marine Division, found that evidence presented at a later hearing did not support accusations of premeditated murder (DeSantis 2005b, A18).'
   ---
   
   I have spoken with Pantano's former battalion executive officer, Major Neil (unsure of spelling Neil/Neal), now commanding officer of Recruiting Station Albany, NY. Maj Neil described the events of that day as absolutely routine, with Pantano's conduct as exemplary, making his radio checkpoint calls timely and consistently throughout the mission. Pantano's conduct prior to the day he engaged and killed the two Iraqis was also described as outstanding by Maj Neil. Pantano's conduct prior to, during, and after the mission where he engaged two Iraqi men was not conducive of someone who had "lost it" or who had cracked and was thirsting for an excuse to smoke a few innocents. Maj Neil also described that when he was interviewed by the press regarding the events of that day, he said something to the effect of it being a good day, which the press quoted him in an improper context as meaning the Major felt it was a good day because they had killed some Iraqis. In actuality, it was a 'good day' for the Major because the mission was successfully executed in an organized fashion, and no Marines were injured.
   
   Accusations arose from a Sgt Coburn that the two Iraqis were detained, bound, and shot in the back, execution style. Pantano was subjected to a court martial hearing, which is the civilian equivalent of a pre-trial hearing, to determine if the government had a sufficient case to formally charge Pantano with two counts of Article 118: Murder. The credibility of Coburn was destroyed during the hearing, and the spotless honor, discipline, and conduct of Pantano gave him the benefit of the doubt in the matter.
   
   The government, which could not pursue charges based solely on the hearing, ordered the bodies of the two killed Iraqis to be exhumed and autopsies conducted-- an impossibility at the time of the hearing due to security concerns where the bodies were buried. This is where the relevance to my summary of the events of that day come into relation with Mr. Welch's accusation toward former 2nd Lt. Pantano. If the results of the autopsies were consistent with murder, new charges would have been brought forth, but they were not. The results of the autopsies were consistent with the testimony presented in the hearing, that the Iraqis were in fact shot in a fashion not consistent with execution, and were shot in the front side.
   
   This information was available long before Mr. Welch wrote his book, but he chose to instead commit the sin of omission, which I view to be equal to dishonesty. Considering his complete lack of disregard of official documents, documents that nullify the inaccurate statements he makes regarding Pantano's lawful engagement of two Iraqis who engaged him without weapons by rushing toward him, constituting a threat to his life, I cannot recommend this book to anybody who seeks truth regarding my honorable brothers in arms.
   
   The fog of war is very real, and the circumstances of a combat situation may not allow for extraordinarily precise judgment during battle. Our military is not free of unlawful acts by its members who have broken the laws dictated in our military legal system and rules of engagement, but it is subject to due process of military law. Incredibly, this criminologist chooses to ignore the due process that exonerated Pantano, accusing the due process of the Marine Corps judicial system of wrongfully clearing Pantano of wrongdoing. The Marine Corps followed the matter even after the hearing initially cleared Pantano's name, and the results simply placed the final nail in the coffin of possibly prosecuting him.
   
   It is disturbing to me that such painstaking legal procedure on behalf of the military to uphold its highest principle, honor, is simply not enough for Mr. Welch. The aggressive nature in which Pantano defended himself, ensuring he returned home to a wife and newborn son, is simply too much for the weak-willed Welch, who instead sees a greater conspiracy of the military wrongfully protecting one of its own in order to escape criticism brought on by an unlawful act.
   
   Thankfully for warriors such as myself, my fellow Marines, former Lt. Pantano, and my brothers and sisters in arms of other branches, we are given due process under military law and protected from a kangaroo court convictions Mr. Welch would certainly bring about if he were a military prosecutor. In his world, appearances of events speak louder than the facts and truth of honorable men who do their duty under fire.
   
   Semper Fidelis

No comments about The Oklahoma City Bombing: Terror in the Heartland (American Disasters).

No comments about Invisible Allies.

No comments about Cyberterrorism: The Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes (Terrorism and Law).