The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

Having read much about the modern state of, and state of affairs in, Iraq in recent years, the Assasin's Gate sets the bar very high both in terms of scope and detail. Packer paints quite a thorough portrait of many of the actors involved in the lead up to the war and speculates in detail the byzantine reasoning behind their varying motivations. From Atlantic avenue in Brooklyn to Firdous Square in central Baghdad, this writings contained in this book hit close to home for me. Recalling a similar journey from downtown Brooklyn to central Iraq during the same time period, some passages in the book forced me to take a closer look at my own preconceptions about Iraq before the invasion commenced and a reexamination of experiences on the ground there. Although I read most of the authors original pieces published separately in the New Yorker, it didn't seem redundant to reread them woven into the body of the Assasins Gate. His writings on the role of Doug Feith are particularly important for anyone trying to come to terms with some of the purely ideological zealotry in wanting to tranform the "Greater Middle East".

Like a lot of things about Iraq, the situation is confusing. This book points out a lot of areas where the whole effort was based on dreams and hope rather than reality.

In World War II, their was a tremendous amount of interservice rivalry. Now it appears that the problem is between the Defense and State Departments. And it seems that the Defense Department was right on in their thinking about winning the war itself. It also seems that they didn't have a clue about winning the peace. We will always be left wondering if the State Department could have done a better job.

While Mr. Packer's history lesson is excellent, we are still left with a question of what to do now. There are those who condemn anything that the Bush administration does. Their view seems to be pull out now, regardless of what happens. Yet the risks of that option are very high.

Mr. Packer seems to think that as a result of lessons learned in the early days right after the war that the Americans are finally getting a handle on what's going on. Let's hope he's right. If the Iraqi's in the south should ally with Iran, the Sunni in the middle of the country ally with Syria there would be an excellent opportunity for the whole middle East to go up in flames.

One point to keep in mind, we've had a couple of thousand American's killed over there. Tragic to be sure, but just about the same number that's killed every two weeks on American highways. We don't see tallies in the newspaper every day about how many are killed on the highways. Michael Moore doesn't scream for safer cars or highways.

George Packer was there. His interviews are with our troops, our elected officials, and the appointed people chosen to run post-war Iraq. The insights are amazing. The level of stupidity demonstrated at the highest levels in war planning and post-war operations is in direct contrast with the bravery and brilliance of our soldiers on the ground.

I continually got the feeling that our sons and daughters in the trenches interacting with the Iraqi people did NOT deserve the incompetant orchestration dictating their "objectives."

This event will go down in history as either a monumental success, or a dismal display of blinded political agendas....and from the evidence and data submitted by Mr. Packer........I fear it is doomed to be the later.

Great read......but a sad one.

Reading this beautifully written book is like listening to people who are in and at war in Iraq talk to you in their home or barracks. Like David Maraniss's moving and invaluable, "They Marched Into Sunlight : War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967", "Assasin's Gate" gives voice to people with very different perspectives - Kurds, Shia, Sunni and U.S. soldiers - but with one overwhelming thing in common - their humanity. One is left wondering about the relationship between policymakers in Washington and people in Iraq. Was the war necessary? Does the truth matter? What were/are Iraq policies based on? Readers may also wonder about their own responsibility (as citizens with the right to vote and to petition their government for the redress of grievances) for the war and to what extent democracy can function based on secrecy, spin, money and, to some extent religious belief. Like "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick, "Assasin's Gate" is an important book for citizens to read.

That is the central theme of this searing review of the first year of the Iraq war. The first 100+ pages are a thoughtful consideration of the neoconservative ideas that led to the war. The rest of the book talks about how a poorly thought out invasion and occupation had consequences on lives in Iraq and in the United States. The perspective of ordinary Iraqis is emphasized but Packer also discusses the family of a fallen US soldier and soldiers in Iraq.

He is actually sympathetic to the idea that overthrowing Hussein could have been worthwhile (and may have been even given the enormous costs). However because Rumsfeld (who along with Bush, Wolfowitz, and Feith comes in for particular scorn) wanted to prove that war could be done on the cheap and Bush had run a presidential campaign against "nation-building" everything that followed the invasion played out in the worst possible way.

The book was written in 2006 so it would be interesting to see Packer's perspective post-surge. However if it were done right in the first place, a surge never would have been necessary.

From page 102, "The deadly chaos that followed the American invasion of Iraq is a story of abstract terms and concrete realities. Between them is a distance even greater than the eight thousand miles from Washington to Baghdad, yet the ideas of the war's architects produced consequences as tangible as gutted offices and homemade bombs."

The much pilloried French and the French Army are said to have been "Lions lead by donkeys" in WWI. Fast foward 100 years or so and we find the US Empire doomed to the same fate. Either that or America is a third rate nation with first rate asperations, either it is the leadership who overate the population or the poulation that overate the leadership, whichever way this war has gone all wrong. This book goes in some way to expain the looming fate of the US. Putting aside the democracy exscuse for invasion we see that the control over the oil resources that Bush and co wanted is just not there. We have a country (at the time of writing) about to embark on a civil war because of a power vacum. We see the occupying forces which had no real stratergy after winning the rather one sided war having to go on the defensive and not real assault against the very forces of terrorism they created themselves. We see a untrusted and untrustworthy Iraqi Police and Army and a failure by the US to understand that "tribal" loyalties transend fine words, phrases and asperations. There is no nation to build here, there never was. The "Elephant" of the Republicans is now tethered to the "donkey" of neo-conservatism and unfortunately will drag the US backwards not forward. The tale that Pacer tells shows that by becoming bogged down in this morass for many years to come, by becoming stuck in the "Holy Lands and Middle East" not doing it's own bidding the US will allow the emerging economies of China and India to gain a grip that it will never be able to throw off. If Carter was seen as the demise of US power and influence the Bush will be the one to finish a once fine nation off.

Support for the Iraqi war and George W. Bush dropped precipitately after the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. Turns out, that wasn't irrational. This book makes clear that flaws of the Bush administration's response to the weather crisis - failure to plan, insulation from and denial of on-the-ground realities, failure to enable front-line staff to get the job done, ideological stubbornness and cronyism - were writ large in the Iraqi war. Most sad was the inability and unwillingness of most Americans in Iraq to understand its people and the complexities of its history.

Sadly, Packer reports that the only expert in insurgencies (consulted only once by the administration and rarely sought by those in command in Iraq) said that only one occuping force in recent history was able to quell an insurgency. It took 10 years to do it.

Read this book.

This book lays out some very interesting and credible arguments for the war in Iraq, as well as expected consequences. And given the ridiculous coverage by the media, this book has served to at least make up for their deficiencies. However, since the book was written, many things have occurred which the author should incorporate into his arguments because I feel that he has made some premature forecasts that he may very well change. The problem with writting about an ongoing topic is that, as things change, one must incorporate new events and reevaluate their previous views. Nonetheless, it is a good book.

An informative book that looks at the Iraq War with a critical eye. Mr. Packer writes of so many things that our government should have done, that our men and women in the field tried to do, only to have their ideas and suggestions ignored by Washington. If one has doubts about how this nation has mismanaged this war, this book should be most informative. It is not so much an anti-war exercise, as it is a compliation of errors made by those who should know better.

For anyone struggling to understand the reasons for the Iraq War, the failure to adequately plan for the post-war transition to democracy, and the nature of the war debate in a politically polarized culture, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer should be extremely interesting. Having followed the war and its aftermath closely, I felt a little reluctant to read a book about it. What more could be said about a subject that has so dominated the country's news and political debate? Upon reading the book my view changed. More than four years after the shock of the September 11th attacks, it was very instructive to read a broader account of a conflict that took shape at a time when the wounds of that day were still quite fresh.

George Packer is well suited to conveying the bigger picture. As a journalist for the New Yorker, he spent considerable time on the ground in Iraq. He has contacts with a wide range of people involved in the prewar debate. He approaches the war without a clear ideological bent, open-minded to the possibility of success, and ready to recognize the efforts of well-intentioned people.

Three themes from the book resonated strongly with me. The first was the run-up to the war. Much has been made of the various, and seemingly shifting, reasons given by the administration in advancing the war: illegal weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's brutality, an implied, if tenuous, connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and the promotion of democracy in the Middle East. Packer claims not to be able to state a simple clear cause of the war. However, he does shed a lot of light on some of the factors that may have contributed. He begins by describing the history of American foreign policy over the prior decades, with particular emphasis on the rise of the "neoconservatives," a group of 1960's liberals who saw America's failure in Vietnam as a sign that America should be more, rather than less, aggressive in actively spreading democracy around the world.

According to Packer, the seeds of regime change had existed since the end of the first Gulf War. Some in government had disagreed with the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power, most notably Paul Wolfowitz, who later became Deputy Defense Secretary. By 1998, a group had convinced Congress and President Clinton to make regime change in Iraq official policy. At the time Iraq was not seen as a threat. When George W. Bush became president, Iraq was not a major issue. In his campaign, he spoke of a "humble" foreign policy. Early in his first term he seemed relatively unengaged in foreign affairs.

Then came September 11th. A president with little apparent interest in world affairs suddenly became very engaged, and hawkish. Individuals who had always advocated regime change in Iraq saw an opportunity. The prospect of invading Iraq united a host of previously disparate groups: neoconservatives who advocated a more assertive American role in fostering democracy, Iraqi exiles who had always wanted to remove Saddam, liberal intellectuals who saw Islamic fundamentalism as a kind of totalitarianism that threatened democracy, and possibly most important, administration hawks like Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who, having served in the Soviet Era, viewed malignant nation-states as the enemy. Packer quotes Wolfowitz, as later acknowledging that Iraqi weapons, the stated rationale for the war, was only the least common denominator that everyone could agree on. Wolfowitz himself saw the goal as a "realignment of American power and influence in the Middle East... as the beginning of an effort to cleanse the whole region of murderous regimes and ideologies."

The second theme that grabbed me was the failure to anticipate the difficulties of the postwar transition. Most Americans agree that key mistakes have undermined the quest to bring stability to Iraq. Disbanding the Iraq army helped fuel the insurgency, and the abuse at Abu Ghraib set back efforts to win hearts and minds in the Arab world. Packer portrays the Bush administration as woefully unprepared for the postwar. He sums up his thesis this way: " Plan A was that the Iraqi government would be quickly decapitated, security would be turned over to the remnants of the Iraqi police and army, international troops would arrive, and most American troops would leave within a few months. There was no plan B."

With America bogged down three years later in a campaign with uncertain outcome, unreduced troop levels, and much money spent, the administration's initial view of a quick, easy transition now seems frightfully rose-colored. How did they expect that Iraq, artificially created out of the remnants of Ottoman empire, strongly divided between Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds, and plagued by a long history of sectarian rivalry and violence, would not only greet Americans as liberators but magically endeavor to live happily every after?

Packer describes a Pentagon that was uninterested in postwar Iraq. They either didn't care about Iraq or were dismissive of anyone who questioned their notion of a simple handover. General Shinseki advised that "several hundred thousand" soldiers would be needed. Individuals in the State Department and think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations, warned of the pitfalls of securing the country without overwhelming international support and troop force. Still, the Pentagon leaders stifled debate and focused only on the invasion.

The final theme I identified was the most poignant. Packer relates an extensive correspondence with the father of a young soldier killed in Iraq. The man is clearly grieving. He is also struggling very hard, through his study of foreign policy, to conclude that his son died for a good cause. In the same chapter, Packer recalls conversations with Americans not so connected to the war. For them, Iraq is a distant place. The war is "a blank screen on which Americans were free to project anything." Before he can fully describe his view from the ground of a complex Iraq and the accompanying difficulty in assessing progress and setback, he is barraged with invective. Each side in the debate sees particular events as vindicating their point of view and their wish to cast blame. Each takes pleasure in the other's defeats. "Iraq was almost always about winning the argument," he writes.

The contrast is startling. What for most Americans is an abstraction, a debate topic, an area of interest, or not, is for a relatively small group of military families a matter of utmost urgency and sometimes a profound crisis. Packer laments the absence of shared sacrifice and the lack of unity and resolve which characterized the days immediately following September 11th.

The Iraq War is not over. It remains to be seen whether America can avert civil war and help forge a more stable and prosperous democracy in Iraq. More will happen, more will be known, and more will be written. But right now, George Packer's The Assassin's Gate represents an outstanding effort to paint a bigger picture of the war thus far.

George Packer lives up to his reputation here as a man who tells it like it is, and all of it too. But he tells all not just to expose poor choices simply for spite. Albeit for people like me who are looking for fuel for spite, there is plenty. But George Packer also provides a solid case study for present and future Imperial Project Management Students.

It has been wisely said that: "... a Prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice, ..." (Nicolo Machiavelli, 1505). Somehow, many people will always seek to dispute that thesis, albeit it is, upon reflection, an obvious truth. But I promise you, when they see your copy of "The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq" come out of your brief case, you will see the same fear in their eyes that would have greeted a twin of the VP's shotgun.

I saw the author interviewed on television and the interviewer was so positive about the book, I had to order it. I have a son in Iraq and I needed to understand what we are doing over there. This book should be a must for everyone, especially for other mothers and fathers who are trying to understand why their son and/or daughter is fighting halfway around the world. Mr. Packer takes you back to origins of our modern involvement in Iraq which I found very interesting. It is an easy read and I found it extremely informative. I was surprised that it was also a very objective and unbiased look at our involvement in Iraq. I've recommended it to all my family and friends.

This book is heartrending in its honesty and devastating in its delivery. This is the truth about how we got to Iraq and what we have done to the Iraqis (not to mention to ourselves) in pursuing our latest and most shameful foreign adventure since Vietnam; I had to suspend reading for a few days in the middle of the book because of nausea.

Packer's indictment of the Bush administration's means and motives is damning. If you read no other history of the present conflict, read this one, and ask yourself what we are going to have to do to prevent it ever happening again.I hope Packer writes a sequel in a couple of years, so we can all learn the truth about the end of this story.

Packer's book may have some useful reporting on the Iraq War, but it is superficial and woefully short on investigation and critical analysis. Instead of asking tough questions he simply believes what he is told and accepts conventional wisdom in interpreting events.

Packer accepts the narrative that this was a war to liberate and democratize Iraq that was derailed by the administration's incompetence. To Packer, the fact that there were not enough troops and no plan for the occupation is evidence of incompetence instead of evidence that the administration was unconcerned with democracy in Iraq. The fact that the Pentagon shut out the State Department and the CIA, intimidated the military brass and used private military contractors is evidence of arrogance and stubbornness, not of a systematic attempt to consolidate power in the Defense Department. Packer believes that he understands the motives of the Bush administration, and that character flaws such as incompetence and arrogance undermined their goals; to me it seems that there is plenty of evidence that, in fact, their goals were not those that they made public. On page 390 he explicitly blames Bush's "character" for the dishonest, opaque, divisive and political manner in which he conducted the war, never considering that an honest, transparent and inclusive debate may have exposed the questionable motives behind the war and prevented it from ever happening.

I'd also like to repeat the points made by a previous reviewer: Packer does not confront the theories that the war was launched with more cynical motives such as securing oil supplies; he mostly ignores the fact that the administration misled the country by focusing on the WMD threat; he inadequately addresses the case against the invasion made by prominent political leaders, instead condescendingly profiling an anti-war organizer and mostly ignoring (and even explicitly rejecting) what turned out to be prescient objections to the war. The Iraqis he interviews are largely educated, English-speaking and liberal, hardly representative of the country as a whole. These failures ultimately inform the entire book. The story he tells is of a possible success becoming a failure through American incompetence, when many people would argue that a war and occupation in a country like Iraq, especially a war and occupation with such unclear goals and questionable legitimacy, had little chance of success from the start.

This book is a first draft of history, hampered by a lack of information and access and a lack of critical analysis. As is often the case, in ten, twenty, fifty years, once officials begin speaking more honestly and more documentation becomes available, much of the story Packer writes in this book will be either modified or discarded and a more accurate narrative of the war will be produced.

Mr. Packer has written a book as fair and balanced as one could reasonably hope to come out of such a politically charged and divisive war. There are no cartoonish superheroes, and more importantly no supervillians. Packer endeavors less to point fingers than he does to knife through the fog. The decisions that led up to and followed "major combat operations" are examined from every possible perspective: the white house, pentagon, state department, Iraqi exiles, the CPA, our troops and above all the Iraqis themselves, whether Kurd, Sunni, Shia, pro- or anti-American. This is as fine and troubling a book as I've read in quite some time.

"The Assassins' Gate" paints a gritty picture of the war in Iraq - how the war got started, how the war is progressing, and more chillingly, glimpses as to where the war is headed.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this book is how George Packer sticks strictly to the facts without passing judgment.

After reading this book, all I felt like doing was screaming.

10 years from now, when the last of the American troops are finally back safe at home, and George Packer sits down with George Bush for one final interview, I expect the conversation to go something like this:

1) Why did you decide to invade Iraq, and what did you hope to accomplish?

Sadam was historically a problem, and we wanted to take him out and put in an Iraqi expatriate as head of government. Removing Sadam would make the region more stable, and might jump-start democracy throughout the Middle East. With Iraq as our ally, that would guarantee a second source of oil for our economy (second to Saudi Arabia), and as Iraq is secular, that could also strengthen regional support for Israel. ...Also, I wanted to finish the job many think my father should have finished back in the 90's.

2) What was the advice from your advisors and supporting government bureaucracy about going into Iraq?

The Military, CIA, FBI, Historians, UN, and other world leaders all told us we were nuts. US Neo-Conservative Republican think tanks thought it was a good idea. We went through the same thinking process when we decided to invade Afghanistan - and that experience exceeded everyone's most optimistic projections.

3) What were you thinking when announcing 'mission accomplished' 10 days after bombing ended 13 years ago?

That the mission was accomplished.

4) What went wrong?

The Iraqi's are completely nuts. They do not understand American values.

5) What were the consequences of your actions?

- The Muslims of the world are united in their hate against America, putting America in even greater peril of being attacked by Arab terrorists. Israel is also under increased peril from Arab attack.

- Iraq is now a 'religious run' state (quite different from a democracy), and unlikely to ever be friendly to Americans. (Similar to how Iran has become).

- Iraq is the new breeding and training ground for fundamentalist Muslim terrorists - 100 times larger and more troublesome than Afghanistan ever was, and completely outside America's ability to control.

- America never managed to secure the oil reserves in Iraq, and Iraq now sells all the oil it produces to China.

- America squandered it's great wealth on a wasted effort to force Democracy onto a group of people living in a desert half way around the world. Meanwhile, China and India, who grow wealthier by the day, now dominate the world economic landscape.

6) Why did it take 13 years after the start of the war before America was able to withdraw its troops from Iraq?

If America were to withdraw its troops any earlier, and Iraq were to disintegrate into a civil war, then the stability of the whole Middle Eastern region would probably have been lost.

7) In retrospect, how could America have better used the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks on American soil?

- We should have invested heavily in the development of alternate energy sources, and focused early on basic scientific research into how to solve the looming energy crisis.

- We should have invested more on improving the infrastructure of United States (roads, sewers, buildings, education) ensuring we remain competitive and strong in a global economy.

- We should have spent more time and effort understanding Muslim values before attempting to educate Muslims as to our what our values of freedom and democracy mean.

8) How could a country of 300 million people allow a single elected person and his hand picked group of neo-cons to drag America into a 13 year war half way around the world, with no stated objectives or goals, and without any form of public debate?

Well sir, that's the beauty of the American democratic system. All you have to do is get yourself elected.

George Bush, 2016

This is an absolutely fascinating book. Although I agree that the numurous acronynms make it somewhat confusing, the book is a real eye-opener as to why we're in Iraq and what we are facing there. Packer is a genuinely good reporter who tries to present a fair picture of Iraq as it exists in the aftermath of the invasion.

This book was filled with details, and I enjoyed it very much. I am very interested in the Iraq situation, and I recommend this book to anyone looking for a bit of past history as well as history in the making. It is well written, and it flows well.

The author does an excellent job of documenting the incompetence of the people involved from the Bush-Cheney White House and the Pentagon, but he skips over the malevolent rationale for the invasion and occupation. He clearly forgets the old truism that the first casualty of war is the truth.

Where the analysis falls down is at its beginning with the inaccurate belief that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al were interested in liberating the people of Iraq from a dictator as was the case with US involvement in Bosnia and Haiti. It is not US foreign policy to liberate people from dictators but rather to support dictators when it furthered the interests of American corporations. The US has provided money, weapons, and military training (even in torture methods) to dictators in Argentina, Chile, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Panama, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Vietnam, Korea, Spain, Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and countless countries in Africa including Nigeria and Egypt.

The Bush people met with US oil and gas companies that were shut out of the natural gas coming out of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and the oil coming out of Iraq, possessing the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world and the only way to insure a turn around was to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The proof is in the US military bases in Afghanistan that are along the route of the natural gas pipeline and far away from the capital and cities of that country, and the efforts of US ground troops to protect only the Iraqi oil fields while bombing hospitals and power stations and sewage and water facilities and letting bandits and looters take over the cities' streets and giving local warlords free access to stores of weapons and explosives all across the country.

With Brennan the American businessmen again had a dictator in place that would sign away the Iraqi people's assets both in the country and their assets in overseas banks. Even $12 billion in cash was disappeared with zero accountability. The US liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq are more accurately compared in intent if not in execution to the Nazi liberation of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Africa, and the Middle East where the goal was also to loot the natural resources of the countries for the benefit of German industrialists who wanted the cheap oil, ore, coal, and slave labor to generate obscene profits. As in America, the Nazi industrialist were not hanged as war criminals and continued with business as usual after WWII. So it is with the wealthy executives running Chevron, Exxon, Halliburton, Lockheed, and the rest of the American military industrial complex. There are always huge profits to be made in war and often as not that is reason enough to start one. After all it is seldom the industrialists sons that will be maimed or killed but rather those of farmers and factory workers, so as all one really needs is a false threat to cause them to respond as patriots and do the wrong thing, the stupid thing, in the false belief they are serving their country when nothing could be further from the truth.

The most interesting part of the book is the time building up to the Invasion and the political back stabbing that went on and the dreadful lack of planning or indeed thinking about the post war activities.

The second half is mainly about interaction with local Iraqius and their lives which is interesting but not as gripping as the build up. The book is well worth a read for all those interested in International Affairs and in the particular American foreign policy

George Packer has written a masterpiece that speaks volumes! The book details the events that contributed to America's entering the War in Iraq and portrays the keyplayers involved. I even got a chance to hear him speak recently and he is extraordinarily down to earth. Enjoy!!

This book almost reads like a novel but unfortunately it's all true. It will infuriate and sadden you. Mr. Packer has revealed the ineptitude of the people that started this war in breathtaking detail and scope.

A well written account of the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. The author was in favor of freeing Iraq by invasion, but he is an honest enough reporter to show how the almost comically incompetent approach of the Bush adminstration doomed the effort to free iraq and its people to failure.

"You are not entitled to your opinion; you are entitled to your informed opinion. If you are not informed on the subject, then your opinion counts for nothing."
~ Harlan Ellison

Everybody has an opinion on Iraq. We've all heard them. Well, after reading this book all I can say is - unless you have read this book your opinion counts for nothing.

This is a decent journalistic account. It contains the kind of "facts" (disjointed first-hand accounts, inside tips, etc.) that journalists are good at. As such, it will be an excellent source for illustrative vignettes and snapshots of happenings in Iraq during these years.

Unfortunately, journalists also have a persistent arrogance to them. They believe that it is their karma to "make a difference," by which they mean to show the world how policy-makers ("political hacks" in journalistic parlance) are making a mess of everything -- a mess that could have been avoided with the wisdom and sophistication of journalists. Unfortunately again, journalists avoid becoming policy-makers because they do not want their "journalistic purity" sullied by the messy requirements of actually building consensus and leading policy decisions. (Or perhaps journalists lack the special kind of courage to risk making mistakes rather than just to stalk the sidelines crying, "foul!")

The author correctly describes a number of messy difficulties in Iraq. He correctly observes that the "political hacks" (i.e. policy-makers) were not sufficiently clairvoyant or omniscient to have avoided these messy situations. These things he documents ad nauseam.

Beyond that, he offers nothing constructive in the way of suggestions, nothing incisive in the way of analyses, nothing convincing in the way of explanations, and nothing adequate in the way of understanding the maelstrom of interests, goals, and ideologies. In short, other than to invoke a spirit of futility and despair, he offers nothing but his snapshots and inside tips ... oh yes ... and his heartfelt earnestness.

If you are interested in the gloom, despair, and hand-wringing that seems to be the only menu offered by the popular press, this book is for you. If you are seriously interested in the future of Iraq and the Middle East, try something with a little more intellectual meat on its bones!

Having read George Packer's reporting on Iraq in The New Yorker, I pretty much knew this was not going to be a shining endorsement of the Bush Administration and its decision to invade Iraq in order to replace the brutally dictatorial regime led by Saddam Hussein with a democratic government. I did wonder, however, just how fierce an attack Packer would make, and although he is somewhat slow to boil, by the end he is savage. But is he fair?

The book opens with an excellent chapter on roots: how the Gulf War was viewed as an unfinished war; how the neoconservatives, led by the likes of Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and especially Paul Wolfowitz, influenced Republican policy makers, particularly after the fall of Russian communism in 1989 (to wit: America, as the only world superpower, could and should impose its doctrines on nations in an effort to reduce tyranny, create democratic governments, and open trade agreements); and how the neocons thought that Clinton had a backward-looking view of American foreign policy. Then came 9/11. According to Kagan, as reported by Packer, it wasn't until that day that Bush began thinking like a neocon.

From here, Packer recounts the now-familiar story of how Bush made his case for attacking Iraq, especially his argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to launch them who knew where. He recounts the day (April 9) when Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi official who had been advocating the overthrow of Saddam since 1991, sat in the White House and watched on TV the statue of Saddam being toppled and wept with joy. But, as Packer says, "After that, the trouble began."

And it's from this point that trouble begins with the book. It's also where Packer gets personally involved in his narrative as he describes his own encounters in the country during visits there. Every person he talks to seems to have a negative view: nothing is going right, everything is in chaos. It's a great way to reinforce a particular point of view; make it the only view you report. I don't doubt the validity of what Packer reports for a second, only its one-sidedness. For example, he tells how when the Iraqi leaders asked Jay Garner, head of ORHA, who was in charge of their politics, they were told that they, the Iraqis, were in charge. To the Iraqis this was almost incomprehensible, they had never been in charge of anything under Saddam. "They were losing faith in us by the second," an aide who was present is quoted as saying. True, I'm sure, at the time, but the thought is allowed to hang there so that its negativity lingers as if it might still be true. Iraqis are showing a willingness to "take charge" that in some regards, considering the continuing violence, is very surprising and hopeful. This kind of thing occurs over and over. It's like reading one police report after another how scissors were used as a murder weapon in various crimes - you soon begin to lose sight of the usefulness of scissors for cutting paper. As the book continues with chapters on insurgencies and possible civil war, the reporting gets more and more incriminating and bitter. By the last chapter Packer is almost frothing with invective at everything related to George Bush and his policies.

Of course, the jury is still out (although Packer doesn't seem to think so). No one can deny that mistakes were made, especially in not thinking through a worse-case scenario or an exit strategy. Again, I'm sure Packer's reporting is accurate (and I must say that I thought the book was very well written), but I'm not sure I can answer the question I posed in my opening paragraph with a yes.

Well researched but naive, overly-simplistic, tedious and repetitive. According to the author, there was not a single good decision made with respect to Iraq. If only the Bush Administration would have listened to the people he interviewed, things would have turned out just fine. There -- I just saved you ten bucks and eight hours of reading. You're welcome.

well, this is unfortunately a disappointingly poor book on balance. I read it completely, and went into it with a positive attitude. The unquestioned literary skills of the author kept me reading, but could not make up for its faults.

First, it is yesterday's book. Written before three overwhelmingly successful elections in Iraq, a constitution, an elected government, the death of Zarqawi and vast overall progress on a number of fronts, it attempts to draw final conclusions too early. Even Zarqawi described Al-Qaeda's current situation in Iraq as "bleak". The author seems to be not aware of the substantial losses in the early days of wars from WWII to the Revolutionary War. War is messy, mistakes are made, battles and men are lost. The poorly-educated (militarily) Packer has probably never heard of Von Moltke or of his well-known dictum that "No plan survives contact with the enemy. Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force." Things take time, and the author has shown panic at too early a stage and lost his perspective of that fact. He is a short-term weak thinker, and war is a long-term business for strong determined men.

Secondly, the author's overt political bias is evident, and he states it so in his more honest previous book, Blood of the Liberals. "Sources say", "an administration official confided", "Comments indicated", "a Marine Colonel disclosed"... At one point, Vice President Cheney sitting in on a Presidential meeting is compared to "a giant toad". No joke! This is a chop and hack piece on the Iraq War and the Bush Adminstration, and that accounts for good sales from those who oppose it and want their prejudices reinforced. The author gives us a story about a crazed band of neocons implementing the ideas taught them by Leo Strauss, a College Professor who died in 1973, leading to the Iraq War. He might just as reasonably have referred to Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1965 book, Why Not Victory? But that would not have fed the strange conspiracy theories of his readers. There is a definite market for biased writing of this sort, just as there is with Ann Coulter's books.

In sum, an old and no longer relevant book whose time has passed, poorly researched, suitable for reading only by those who already have drawn the same flawed and precipitous conclusions of the clearly prejudiced author. Not worth the money, or ANY money or time, unless you're looking for reinforcement of the early leftist spin of several years ago, when the book was written.

The author of this book asks the question "Why did the U.S. invade Iraq?" and pretends not to know the answer: "It still isn't possible to be sure ?"- This is a joke.

Has the author not read the 1996 report, penned by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser & Co, titled " A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", in which it is said:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."

It is widely known that the high officials responsible for the hawkish foreign policy in the Bush-Cheney administration (Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Wurmser, Perle, Hannah, Adelman, Abrams , Bolton, Hadley,...etc.) have long advocated a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein in order to secure "the realm" of Israel.

Now that they have succeeded, why the cover-up? This is disingenuous to the extreme.