Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Endangered America's Long-Term National Security by Robert Patterson

From the Publisher

Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson exposes the terrifying, behind-the-scenes story of the years when the most irresponsible President in our history had his finger on the nuclear trigger. Dereliction of Duty is the inside story of the damage Bill Clinton did to the U.S. military and how he compromised our national security. From his laughable salutes, to his arrogant, anti-military staffers, the message came through loud and clear: the Clinton Administration had nothing but contempt for America’s men and women in uniform.

Dereliction of Duty is the book every American concerned about our national security has been waiting for—written by a military man who was an eyewitness inside the Clinton White House, and who can no longer in good conscience keep silent.

Publishers Weekly

No man is a hero to his valet-or his personal military aide, to judge by this memoir of the Clinton White House by a retired Air Force colonel who carried Clinton's "nuclear football" and had intimate access to the President from morning jog to evening card game. Although Patterson claims to have no political agenda and to personally like the man, he revisits all the familiar touchstones of conservative Clinton-hatred (he also suggests that the former president bears some responsibility for the events of 9/11). In Patterson's account, Clinton emerges as a careless, disingenuous frat boy, mercilessly hen-pecked by the domineering Hillary, whose tirades leave him looking like a "beaten puppy." He presides over a chaotic administration focused on spin and fund-raising; he fondles an Air Force One stewardess and ogles Patterson's wife in the Oval Office; he loses the nuclear launch codes; and he cheats at golf-which Patterson views as "not just a peccadillo but symptomatic of the way he approached life." Patterson also asserts that Clinton "directly and severely harmed this nation's security." Clinton debilitated the military, Patterson claims, by downsizing it, trying to remove the ban on homosexuals and put women in combat roles, "gutt[ing] morale" with pay freezes and "rudderless" peace-keeping missions, and turning it into an "armed social services agency." Worst of all, Clinton was soft on terrorism and missed a chance to get bin Laden with cruise missiles. Patterson raises important issues, but he seems most often affronted by what he sees as Clinton's belief that he "was privileged to conduct himself at a much lower code of conduct than the men or women he would repeatedly order into harm's way." There's a case to be made for Clinton's laxness on security matters, but Patterson's rendition is too anecdotal and brief, as well as too disgruntled-offended, even-to convince many. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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Table of Contents