A few new books of note

Former CIA Director George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, is due out April 30, and from my chair it looks like a must read.

I wax and wane on whether Tenet was one of the most incompetent DCIs in history, or if he was thrown under the bus in the wake of Iraq's missing WMDs, the evidence of which Tenet so famously proclaimed to President Bush was a "slam dunk." In the end, it's probably a combination of the two, in my opinion, but that's before I've read this book. We now know that the only "slam dunk" was Tenet's butt, after the WMDs were missing like Donald Rumsfeld's public speaking career.

I rate it as a must read, and I'll get around to it this year, for sure. I'm still behind on my reading from last year, and this year I've been glacial in getting my reading off the ground, so I must get moving.

However, this will be a comeback year for me for reading, just like I was prior to the 2004 presidential campaign. In '04, I think I read something like 25 books, and almost all of them were related to the presidential campaign or politics in some way. So, at least I'm ahead of my '04 pace in terms of when I'm getting started. Now, I've just got to get moving. Part of the reason for my being slow with my reading: I subscribe to more magazines than ever (and that's not going to slow down), and I've been doing more writing than ever. (Check CMB's archives to verify that!)

Anyway, Tenet's book should be interesting. The big question for me is, what light is he going to shed on the War in Iraq that Bob Woodward, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, etc. have not? We'll soon know.

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It looks like R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. hasn't lost his touch on how to write a trashy, piece of garbage Clinton tome. His new book, The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House, is now shipping.

Tyrrell, The American Spectator editor and founder, (that should end the question of credibility right there) has a long history of writing hateful books about the Clintons, the manuscripts of which wouldn't get past a freshman college journalism professor. His association with The Arkansas Project is also well-documented.

Not to put too fine of a point on it - Tyrrell's books have more Deep Throats than Clinton ever enjoyed in the Oval Office. [Translation - virtually all of his sources are anonymous, which is beyond the pale for authors, editors and publishers who have any journalistic standards whatsoever. Wait, Tyrrell and credibility is an oxymoron. Sorry.]

Media Matters has obtained an advanced copy of the book, and previews it Here.

After reading MM's preview of the book, one of my favorite parts is this:

Tyrrell, citing an anonymous police officer "during a September 2004 interview with anonymous interviewer" (what the hell is an anonymous interviewer?!?) Tyrrell claimed regarding Denise Rich, ex-wife of financier Marc Rich, whom Clinton pardoned shortly before he left office:

In August 2001, in an unguarded moment of conversation with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, soon to be House Minority Leader, a currently serving Capitol Hill police officer standing two feet away heard Hillary snap, Bill "f---ed" Denise. [Page 78]

This moron wrote a whole book like this? Should make for a good trashy read, but one which Repubes will sop up on a plate with a biscuit. One can imagine Ann Coulter kissing and licking the cover in breathless anticipation of reading this piece of, ahem, defecation, so she can compare it to her own Clinton tomes of crap to see how it stacks up.

Will I buy this book? Not with a gun to my head and a complimentary hundred in my hand. I will pick it up used though, probably in a year or two, when I'm in the mood to read fiction. I only talk about it here to illustrate the fact that the anti-Clinton haters are back in full force, which could more than sink Hillary's chances to be president, if for no other reason than people don't want to return to those days in the late 1990s - I strongly doubt that those feelings of fatigue about all of the Clinton hunting and bashing are gone in the minds of the American public. If that's the case, it's mission accomplished for Tyrrell.

Don't sweat it, Hill 'n Bill - at least Tyrrell is going to hell. Not a bad trade off.