• James Risen’s ‘Pay Any Price’ - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/books/review/james-risens-pay-any-price.html

    While this is an enormously impressive book, it does have some weaknesses. I’ll mention three. Risen makes clear at the outset that he has relied upon many anonymous sources. Fair enough. But he has also relied on many open sources while rarely naming them. He says, for example: “One 2012 estimate concluded that the decade of war had cost Americans nearly $4 trillion.” Why not provide the source for this estimate, and for others mentioned throughout the book? Doing so would enable readers to evaluate the reliability of the source, and to conduct further research on their own.

    Another weakness is that Risen, whose moral indignation is kept in check but rarely far below the surface, does not make distinctions that might be drawn between those he labels kleptocrats, oligarchs and the simply greedy. He rightly points out that the corporate leaders of the security industry are the true winners of the war on terror. He names them “the New Oligarchs.” It is certainly true that General Atomics, which produces drones and in 2012 received $1.8 billion in government contracts, has benefited financially. But it can hardly be blamed for that. President Obama’s policy of aggressively using drones is open to criticism on many grounds, but the argument should be with the government policy, not with the company that makes the drones.

    Finally, while Risen is devastating in his criticism of the profligacy of government agencies and the “oversight-free zone” they operated, he acknowledges that this was because they were overwhelmed, that Congress was panicking and that the public was whipped up into an unwarranted fear of terrorism. He points to the role of self-appointed terrorism experts in promoting this fear while drawing lucrative consulting contracts for themselves. But he makes no mention of the press . I would argue that many in the news #media were at least as guilty as others in his book of stirring up public anxiety for private gain. Risen himself, and the paper for which he works [SIC], are notable exceptions. Still, an account of the #corruption engendered by endless war that doesn’t include the role of a complicit media is incomplete.