(Free Press) $27

It's a safe bet that most people who actually bother to read Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies will do so from within the comfort of a pre-drawn conclusion about its subject matter. This book may appear to be a lot of things--among them a brief history of a global paradigm shift (from Cold War to Holy War) written by a man who watched the transformation firsthand, a memoir of 30 years of defense and intelligence service in the U.S. government, and a primer of recommendations for how best to wage war on terrorism from someone who knows.

But we all know, based on the onslaught of media coverage that has greeted its publication (and the attendant rush by Republicans to discredit its author), that this look "Inside America's War on Terror" is first and foremost a screed against President George W. Bush, with specific regard to the war in Iraq, and even more specific regard to how that war was not only an inappropriate response to 9/11, but was, in fact, a callous exploitation of the nation's grief and anger, a betrayal, a big lie. Best of all, this invective is being hurled by the right, by a former employee of the administration. It's a whistleblower book. Unclear? Perhaps these lines from the final pages will bring you into the picture: "[After 9/11, Bush] had a unique opportunity to unite America, to bring the United States together with allies around the world to fight terrorism and hate, to eliminate al Qaeda, to eliminate our vulnerabilities, to strengthen important nations threatened by radicalism. He did none of these things. He invaded Iraq."

It's possible, though unlikely, that a pragmatist like Clarke believed Against All Enemies would be widely read (as opposed to widely discussed) for reasons other than those listed above, by people other than foregone Bush haters. Either way, it stands to reason that the final two chapters, during which Clarke dissects the Bush administration's irrefutable hard-on for Saddam while outlining the steps that should have been taken to prosecute a war against al Qaeda, are by far the liveliest reading this book has to offer. Clarke, who is neither antiwar nor soft on Saddam, offers a point-by-point priority schematic for the real war we should be fighting (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran) while systematically dismantling the arguments offered in favor of the proxy one our government led us into, including those elusive WMDs--which, for the record, Clarke acknowledges Iraq's tireless pursuit of. What concerns him more, however, is the way the administration used a clear threat from another enemy (bin Laden and al Qaeda) to mislead the public into justifying an invasion that was "received wisdom, a decision already made and one that no fact or event could derail."

As advertised, Clarke's criticisms are harsh and damning, and no key players in the administration (Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz especially) are spared. But there's both more and less to Against All Enemies than Bush bashing. In fact, aside from these last chapters and the book's opening--a minute-by-minute account of 9/11 from within the White House that devolves quickly into a barely readable tangle of acronyms (PEOC, NORAD, POTUS, FLOTUS, JCS, DOD, STRATCOM, DEFCON, AWACS, CAP, COG, IAEA, FAA, SIOC, LNG; zzz)--W.'s presence in the book is limited to snide parenthetical asides where Clarke's contempt sneers through. In between, however, lie 180-odd problematic pages.

Problematic because there is an enormous amount of important, subtle infor- mation to sift through in a timeline that stretches from Reagan (Iran, Beirut, Afghanistan, Israel, USSR) to Bush I (Iran-Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) to Clinton (Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, bin Laden) to the present, and includes countless names and dates. There are occasional flaws in logic, and more than one half-finished explanation that leads one to wonder if maybe Clarke is rationalizing (his open reverence for Clinton, for example, though refreshing, tends toward credulity). Overall, though, his analysis of the leaders he has followed is balanced. Until the final chapters, anyway, this is history, not polemic. Still, chilling images prevail. The picture Clarke paints is of a global reality in which the war against Islamic fundamentalism is not an option, nor even ours to declare, but a reality that has been thrust upon us and will not go away until someone in power has the moral courage to fight the real enemy for the real reasons.

The pages are also problematic because Clarke is a terrible writer, a clunky stylist of dim wit and shoddy vocabulary. His attempts to add color to his prose are missteps, as are the intrusions of emotion ("I wept from my gut"). As a result, the middle section, which is full of insightful specificity about the last 25 years of U.S. foreign policy, facts which could really help inform the knee-jerk Bush hater and the knee-jerk Bush apologist alike, verges on illegibility. This makes Clarke the worst kind of terrible writer: the kind who has a lot to say. Which makes this the worst kind of important book: the kind which everyone will have strong opinions about, but which almost no one will actually read.