At first I imagined author George Friedman (founder of Stratfor, "one of the world's most respected private global intelligence firms") was simply another Bush-basher. However, as I listened further I discovered he pretty much excoriates all branches of government and both political parties. In probably the most even-handed treatment of the current War on Terror, America's Secret War travels from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond. In his accounting of the Afghanistan campaign, I learned of a skywriting B-52 Stratofortress and the CIA shoveling approximately seventy million dollars into buying the shaky allegiance of various Afghan tribal leaders. The entire Middle East-Muslim scene is is incredibly complicated to us Westerners. And early on in the world wide war on terror, it became obvious, that without up to-date-operatives on the ground, the U.S. was fighting blind both militarily and culturally. This lack of human intel was due to the Democratic controlled Congress of the past four decades mandating that anyone U.S. intelligence dealt with must be as clean as a Methodist or Anglican minister. For those Bush-haters who claim that the U.S. trained and sponsored bin Laden during the Afghan war, it is revealed that America supplied and trained the Northern Alliance while Muslim Pakistan  aided al Qaeda. And I doubt many American's knew that the United States, for a time, took physical control of Pakistan's nuclear facilities. Also revealed was the fact that the U.S. has a plan to first-strike, with nuclear weapons, all nuclear facilities deemed to be insecure or cooperating with terrorists. Mr.Friedman also claims that the current war with Iraq was simply a clear no-nonsense message to Saudi Arabia to halt their funding of Wahabbi extremists and al-Qaeda, or their kingdom would soon feel the metal treads of M1A1 Abrams tanks tearing up the asphalt of Riyadh. I was sad to learn that author Friedman thought Donald Rumsfeld had done a poor job since the beginning of the war as I thought just the opposite. And finally as the 9/11 attack is analyzed, it is revealed that without a doubt it was a very expensive and complicated task requiring extensive training, split second timing, and years of intricate planning.