I'm beginning to think that Clancy is this century's Jonathan Swift - that Jack Ryan and his surrounding story is a skeleton that Clancy hangs his political rants on. I get tired of the endless anti-abortion, right-wing demagoguery that has been slowly filling up his books and accelerated with Executive Orders and Rainbow Six. He's a good storyteller who has let his politics poison his books... because the political/social rants REALLY - really - slow down the story.Are there any editors with guts anymore? 200 pages could have been cut from this book with no ill effect.