To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq“Detailed, nuanced, gripping . . . A must-read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post From the New York Times bestselling author comes the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy--the Bush and Cheney administration's decision to invade Iraq. Even now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. For too many people, the damage is still too palpable, and still unfolding. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few of them are not haunted by it, in one way or another. Perhaps it's that combination, the passage of the years and the still unresolved trauma, that explains why so many protagonists opened up so fully for the first time to Robert Draper. Draper's prodigious reporting has yielded scores of consequential new revelations, from the important to the merely absurd. As a whole, the book paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. Draper's fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective process that arrived at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth--evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing. |
Contents
CHAPTER | 23 |
CHAPTER THREE | 53 |
CHAPTER FOUR | 73 |
CHAPTER FIVE | 93 |
CHAPTER SEVEN | 115 |
CHAPTER EIGHT | 133 |
CHAPTER NINE | 157 |
CHAPTER | 171 |
CHAPTER THIRTEEN | 221 |
CHAPTER FIFTEEN | 243 |
CHAPTER SIXTEEN | 257 |
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | 285 |
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | 301 |
CHAPTER NINETEEN | 325 |
CHAPTER TWENTYONE | 357 |
NOTE ON SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 409 |
Other editions - View all
To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq Robert Draper Limited preview - 2020 |
To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq Robert Draper Limited preview - 2021 |
To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq Robert Draper No preview available - 2021 |
Common terms and phrases
administration officials Afghanistan agency Ahmad Chalabi Al Qaeda Alastair Campbell ambassador American Arab Armitage asked attacks Baghdad Blair Blix Blix's bombing Bremer briefing Bush administration Bush's CENTCOM chemical weapons Cheney Cheney's CIA analyst CIA director CIA official CIA senior official CIA's coalition Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice Curveball David declassified Department official deputy director deputy secretary dictator Donald Rumsfeld Doug Feith Duelfer February Fleischer Garner George Tenet going Hadley inspectors intelligence official Interview with CIA invading Iraq Iraq's Iraqi John McLaughlin later leader Libby Luti Makiya March meeting memo Middle East military Miscik months national security adviser Newbold nuclear October Oval Office Paul Wolfowitz Pentagon Powell's President Bush president's Qaeda recalled regime Saddam Hussein Scooter Libby secretary of defense Senate September speech staffer terror terrorists threat tion told transcript troops undersecretary United UNSCOM vice president Washington Post White House York