The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans Are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War

by Bill Gertz

The U.S. government is in crisis.

With America’s attention fixated on who will step into the Oval Office in 2009, no one has noticed where the real power has shifted—to a vast network of unelected officials whose authority has grown wildly out of control. In his latest blockbuster book, acclaimed defense and national security reporter Bill Gertz exposes these astonishingly powerful leaders and their enablers in the political class—and their devastating impact on America's national security.

Gertz shows how entrenched liberal activists have become dominant even under an ostensibly conservative administration. And he names names of those who actively subvert official U.S. policy—including not only liberal Democrats but also a number of so-called Republicans who have joined this insidious “Blame America First” crowd.

The Failure Factory

• The shocking, previously untold story of the partisan bureaucrats who completely undercut the U.S. position on Iran’s radical Islamist regime
• Barack Obama’s disastrous national security policies—and his stable of advisers who have already put America at risk
• The recent showdown in the Pentagon that laid bare the U.S. government’s ongoing failures to tackle the threat of Islamist extremism
• Flagrant cases of sabotage by top State Department officials that have emboldened dangerous states like Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Communist China
• Stunning new intelligence failures—including one that may have allowed a terrorist group to penetrate the FBI and CIA
• How even the Bush White House was overrun with Democrats and liberal Republicans
• The legions of “Clinton generals”—top military brass whose careers blossomed during the Clinton administration—who make the United States more vulnerable
• How Democrats are exploiting the antiwar movement for political gain, with little regard for the potentially devastating consequences
• How the defense secretary’s public defiance of official U.S. policy could have gotten him fired—but instead went unchallenged

Based on scores of exclusive interviews and displaying the groundbreaking reporting that has made Bill Gertz’s previous books smash bestsellers, The Failure Factory offers a chilling look at the threats to our national security that exist within our own government.

Genres: Politics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2008

Reviews

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prophetic in his warnings about Russian, the Deep State, and China but regretfully condones the disastrous neocons.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've enjoyed Gertz's writing in both the Washington Times and in hist numerous books for years. I've always found him to be an informative author in his particular field - military and intel community affairs. I also find his "Blue Team/China is a threat" perspective to be refreshing in this age of China good/engagement good/let's ignore the fact that the ChiCom government is repressive, expansionistic and focused on replacing American of the preeminent global power."

However, in this book, he jumps the shark. Basically, any disagreement with what he claims is the Bush Administration's conservative defense and foreign policy (i think that this premise is not as much of a given as he does) is due to dastardly liberals. I have no particular love for those on the Left side of the political spectrum. But for Gertz to chalk up all of foreign policy and national security problems to them is ludicrous. Oh, and any Republican who disagrees with Gertz? A liberal RINO of course.

Don't get me wrong; there are some valuable parts in this book. His examination of the Prouty case, in which a Hezbollah operative basically got into the FBI due to a misguided diversity policy coupled with lax security, is fascinating...in a disturbing, car crash sort of way. And, he does do an effective job of exposing the almost suicidal pro-China policies that this government follows, mainly due to a combination of wishful thinking and greed. Finally, even if he overstates the ideology, he does show how much policy set by elected officials is controlled by career bureaucrats and how dangerous that can be.

At the same time, it is hard to take serious a book that sees homosexuals in the military as one of the main reason our national defense is suffering.

So, check it out...but be warned...you'll have to pick through a lot of partisan ranting to get to the good stuff.

[Dfritz]

A real barn burner!