The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq Review

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The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq ReviewAs the promise of a quick victory in Iraq fades on the horizon, and the reality of a long, messy and costly occupation emerges, authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's timely book "The Best War Ever: Lies Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq" examines the details behind the propaganda and the headlines that led to the war in Iraq. The authors' main point is that the wave of propaganda and lies continues, and while this is a multi million business that successfully 'sold' the war to Americans, the campaign isn't reality. Those who created the war, coveted the war, profit from it, and sold it are immersed in an incredible, dangerous fantasy of 'victory' 'liberty' and the spread of 'democracy.' Meanwhile those who chose to read this book are likely to be those who haven't drunk the cool-aid and are probably already opposed to the war for a variety of reasons. While I'd like to imagine that the book would help change the pro-war opinion, it probably won't happen. Nonetheless, the facts presented here will stun and sicken those already opposed to the war, and by the time the last page is turned, the anti-Iraq war reader will feel their opinions solidified.
The book details the PR campaign ($300 million over a 5 year period) launched before the war. It takes a particularly cynical mind to conduct surveys with a focus on "casualty aversion" in order to analyze how a war can be 'sold' to the people, but those surveys were conducted with the conclusion that Americans would swallow the Iraq war without too much squawking if they believed the war would "ultimately succeed." Experts on the pre-war Future of Iraq Project urged the administration to consider back up plans in case it didn't go smoothly and even predicted looting and the emergence of insurgency. This team was replaced, and the invasion of Iraq sailed ahead with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz predicting that Iraq could "finance its own reconstruction." Fat chance of that happening. By late 2003, the occupation was costing America 1 billion a week, and by the end of 2005, 5.9 billion a month!
The book also examines specific linguistic choices made by the speechmakers and the media spokespeople in order to present a united, positive front on the subject of Iraq, and hand-in-hand with the word choices is the "bloodless" approach to the war--the suppression of photos, the lack of coverage of the horrendous wounds some of our soldiers are coming home with--plus the lack of coverage of the deaths of Iraqis.
There's a lot of 'old' material here--the Valerie Plame outing, the smear campaign against Wilson, the forged documents detailing the purchase of uranium oxide, etc. But in spite of the fact some of this is old news, the authors plug the material into the book to illustrate an overall pattern of the media burying stories and retractions while hyping rumours of supposed weapons findings in Iraq. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) for example, with their "big impact" project and a generous budget of 300 million hunted for WMD in Iraq but couldn't discover anything. But no matter--because the lack of weapons led to a U.S. intelligence theory that Saddam deliberately acted suspicious to 'dupe' America. The twists and turns of the propaganda used for this war would be hilarious if it were fictional--but it's not--it's real--and people are dying because of it.
One of the best sections of the book covers the arguments that led to the war, and includes quotes from those who predicted invading Iraq would be a piece of cake ("I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators"- Cheney). New arguments have been created for remaining in Iraq, and once again by putting this all in print, the authors illustrate an insidious pattern of shifting propaganda. The authors successfully debunk all the arguments for the war--including the flypaper theory, and instead argue that it's time for damage control. The book includes scrupulous footnotes and an index--displacedhumanThe Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq Overview

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The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict Review

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The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict ReviewThree trillion dollars for the war in Iraq is an incredible amount, almost beyond comprehension, and certainly far beyond the figures provided by the Bush administration. Yet this total is made both credible and comprehensible through the documentation of Joseph Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Prize-winner in economics, and Professor at Columbia) and Linda Bilmes, Harvard University expert on public policy and finance.
Compelling alternative uses for the money are numerous. For example, we could have put Social Security on sound financial footing for a fraction of that cost, and avoided the nearly 4,000 American deaths (plus $500,000/death benefits) and 100,000 estimated Iraqi deaths - plus an untold number of seriously wounded and their long-term disability and health costs. (Stiglitz found that 40% of Gulf War troops were declared disabled, and that was only a one month war; he sees Pentagon estimates of Gulf War II wounded and disabled as grossly understated, and documents that conclusion. Another key point - peak disability expenditures for WWII veterans did not occur until 1993; thus this war will affect spending decades into the future.) Alternatively, America's trillion dollar+ infrastructure needs could be met with only half that expense.
Other costs include skyrocketing re-enlistment bonuses (up to $150,000 - their alternative is personal safety or much higher-paid private security work), the extra costs of using reserve and guard troops, up to $1,222/day for private security guards to replace servicemen paid less than one-sixth that, lost billions to reconstruct Iraq and spent in non-competitive bidding, and massive equipment replacement costs.
Then there are the opportunity costs associated with spending the money overseas, with no return to the American economy, increased pressure on the dollar, and the likely increased cost of oil. Finally, what about the interest costs of financing this war with debt, and our increased reliance on foreign nations holding that debt?
Supposedly this war is being fought to promote democracy. Yet, as Stiglitz points out, it is being mostly sold and funded through hiding the costs from the public. Continuing our presence in Iraq may, with interest, raise the total to $6-7 trillion. Meanwhile, bin Laden roams free, and even more Islamicists hate us.
"The Three Trillion Dollar War" is MUST reading.The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict Overview

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Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan Review

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Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan ReviewThe reviews are in, and they suggest that the book is a comprehensive and revealing account of genocide in our time:
"In Genocide in the Middle East, Hannibal Travis breaks new ground in genocide studies by unveiling the full panoply of genocidal processes in the Middle East and West Asia as no previous scholar has. But he does much more: in terms of its twentieth and twenty-first-century coverage, this is simply the most expansive, detailed, and up-to-date history of genocide we possess." -- Adam Jones, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of British Columbia Okanagan, and author of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge, 2006)
"Eyewitness accounts and diplomatic reports are effectively interwoven with other documentary evidence and academic research to produce a very thorough and disturbing portrait of this history." -- Mark Welton, Professor, Department of Law, United States Military Academy
"The comprehensive research is breath-takingly evident. This historical account of the lesser know genocidal conflicts is incredibly revealing. Perhaps the best thing one could say about this book is that the familiar adage--'Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it'--reverberates throughout this intensely engaging volume." -- American Society for International Law, UN21 Newsletter
"This ambitious book in its research and coverage tells a sorry tale of mankind's inhumanity and intolerance over millennia of genocidal deeds and rhetoric. A fast-moving narrative reaches from biblical times to Darfur, describing tragic events accompanied by selective quotations from their participants and observers. Genocide may be a recently invented term, but its occurrences based on a variety of causes and reasons seem to have been a deep part of the human experience of group interactions." -- Henry Steiner, Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School, and co-author, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 3d ed. 2007)
With an epic historical sweep, "Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan," reveals how the struggles by nations and empires to establish their regional supremacy resulted in the destruction of families and human groups. This book presents a new theory of the meaning and scope of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, based on the drafting history, the case law of international criminal tribunals, and practice of the states parties to the convention since the 1950s. It then paints an expansive portrait of genocide against populations on all six inhabitable continents, with a special focus on the greater Middle East and North Africa since the nineteenth century. In the Ottoman Empire, the Interior Minister issued orders describing the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek subjects of the empire as saboteurs allied to Russia who needed to be deported from their homes, and led efforts to massacre entire cities, carry out systematic rapes, and impose famine and disease on the surviving remnants. Similarly, in 1980s Iraq the Revolutionary Command Council of the Ba'ath party issued orders that served as the basis of convictions for genocide and other crimes in the Iraqi High Tribunal. These orders declared that areas serving as a base of operations for Kurdish and pro-Iranian insurgents should be rendered devoid of all life. Finally, in the Darfur region of Sudan, as in southern Sudan before it, the President and Interior Minister issued orders to the army and allied militia to kill and drive out entire communities in regions seeking independence, autonomy, or simply political equality. This book also provides cause for hope, explaining how former dictators have been tried and convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, and how their victims have won independence and compensation for their losses after the fact in places like Armenia, Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, northern Iraq, East Timor, and southern Sudan.Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan Overview

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A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America's War on Terror Review

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A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America's War on Terror ReviewDan Ford, after exhaustive study of all the available sources on Boyd's thought has written a very useful and concise summary of his major theories. Having read everything written about John Boyd, I found Ford's treatment perhaps the best treatment of his thought for those not interested or unable to invest the time in the very dense work of Osinga or the more breezy account by Coram. Ford's treatment of the OODA loop is particularly helpful and may be the best explication available. If this short work is your first introduction to John Boyd, it will surely whet your appetite for more. As others have said, for a concentration on the theories, see Hammond; for more on the personal life, read Coram. If you're willing to be challenged intellectually, spend time with Osinga. Well done, Mr. Ford!A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America's War on Terror Overview

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Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security Review

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Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security ReviewThe author's passion and professionalism shine through this short book. This is not a general guide to 'Reducing Uncertainty...' it is primarily written for those in government and others within 'The Beltway'. Take away that context and it is a gem for all intelligence analysts that deserves a thorough reading.
I'd recommend this for students on courses in international politics, history, strategy and intelligence - to name the obvious ones.
Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security Overview

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