Isikoff and Corn have a lot of blame to distribute for the march to an unneccessary war in Iraq. Neocons and other leaders within the administration acted on unchecked intelligence sources when it suited their purpose and ignored contrary facts when they threatened to slow the march. There was rarely a fact the administration was unwilling to distort or a patriot it was unwilling to defame in order to serve the purpose of democratizing the middle east. Perhaps worst of all, the press gave them a nearly free pass out of laziness or fear. Hubris does for American arrogance in statecraft what Fiasco does for it in military planning and execution: it exposes both the sinews of American excess and the price that all of us will pay for it

If you enjoy reading a biased book filled with false information then this book is for you. After all who needs facts when you have an agenda. I am sick of reading books who use "CIA official" as a source. I understand you need to keep some sources confidential but when who base an entire book on unnamed sources it tends to raise questions in my mind, especially when the book is nothing more than a hit piece designed to make the administration look bad. To all you Bush haters who could care less about the truth then by all means read this several times over. If you are looking for the truth then leave this alone, it is not even good for a laugh.

Yes, there are lots of problems with the war in Iraq. Yes, it has been mishandled, but the question for me is if this war is wrongly ran or is it fundamentally wrong?
The book tends to argue that we had no business in Iraq, and the situation there is a mess because we should not be there in the first place.
Let's have a historical perspective: We pacified and democratized Germany, and we kept troops there for 60 years. No one is arguing with that. We also pacified and democratized Japan, and we kept troops there for 60 years also no one is arguing with that. We saved S Korea from communism and made it the 9th largest world economy, in contrast with their Northern brothers that are starving to death... We saved Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Sadam, no one is arguing with that either.
Now is Iraq. Five years and 3000 casualties later we are all whining and begging our leaders to quit with our tail between our legs. What if FD Roosevelt quit after a couple of years of fighting Germany and Japan? What if Harry Truman and General McArthur, just said "This Korean winter is colder than we thought, lets just pack up and go"? Well, they didn't, and they had to send thousands and thousands of young Americans to the ultimate sacrifice.
Today FDR is know as the savior of civilization and democracy and General McArthur has a 50 foot statue in the port of Incheon, Korea as the saviour of this nation. (well, half of this Nation)
But Iraq? Let's just quit... great leader Ahmadinejad and his friends can take it over...
Oh... where have all he cowboys gone?

While looking for this book, I stumbled on "The World Without US" - a documentary similar in topic. After checking out the trailer in the reviews, I got the DVD and the film was amazing. It takes the premise of this book a step farther by asking, what would happen should the US withdraw its military completely from the world? I think that the film makers did the question justice by traveling around the world and interviewing amazing people with amazing points of view. Answering a hypothetical question is hard, for any author and filmmaker, however this movie did the job, weather you agree with the answer or not. Check it out also.

The World Without US - With Niall Ferguson

Isikoff's and Corn's _Hubris_ describes the run-up to the Iraq War, including the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies around the world. Although there was bad intelligence in general (yellowcake uranium in Niger, aluminum tubes that were not suited for nuclear enrichment, "Curveball", etc.), the Administration selected bits and pieces of this already suspect intelligence in order to promote the war.

This book also covers the Valerie Plame (Wilson) leak story. Only Scooter Libby ever really got in any sort of trouble over that.

_Hubris_ doesn't really get into the actual prosecution of the war all that much; try Thomas Ricks' _Fiasco_ for more details about what was/is going on in Iraq.

Although Corn writes for _The Nation_ and has written _The Lies of George W. Bush_, _Hubris_ doesn't really come across as stridently partisan. It does necessarily rely on a lot of personal communications and anonymous sources, making it difficult to independently confirm what was said. Some chapters heavily use asterisked footnotes, which can be somewhat distracting. And, the book is a bit longer than normal (about 400 pages, plus notes, index, etc.)

But these are minor quibbles. Read _Hubris_, and learn how this war got started....and might have been avoided.

For those of you looking for a comprehensive window into how the intelligence on Iraq was manipulated in the run-up to the invasion and occupation, this isn't as comprehensive as some of the other tomes by such people as Tyler Drumheller, James Risan, and James Bamford. But it does offer incredible insight into the leaking of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and how I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby got caught lying to federal investigators and the Grand Jury.

Curveball is explained here, too. It really is sickening how the Bush-Cheney regime and its neocon cabal was able to get away -- literally -- with murder.

If you actually believe that George W. Bush has decision-making authority and that he isn't just a dim-witted fortunate son who was elevated to his present figurehead status by PNAC and a wide variety of associated lobby groups, you're just the sort of rube who will love this book.

But if you're the kind of person who understands that American foreign policy is primarily controlled by lobbies, that American involvement in the affairs of north African and especially west Asian countries is dictated by pro-Israel and pro-oil lobbies and that the best way to understand decision-making in Washington is to follow the money, congratulations. You have a clue and at least some notion of what's going on. Now you'll never have to slog through this rancid pile of nearly 500 pages of intolerable drivel as I did because I'm here to type you that reading this is a waste of time for anyone with a triple-digit IQ.

"Hubris" is not a volume for the serious anti-war thinker. It was written for and marketed to bored housewives who call NPR on a daily basis and childish, sheltered suburbanites who attend asinine anti-war rallies. As such, it concerns itself with smokescreen trivialities like the famous fake Nigerian uranium documentation, the "Curveball" informant and a wide variety of other painfully obvious neocon lies to emphasize the fallacy that RECOGNIZABLE BAD PEOPLE IN POWER (THE ONES ON THE COVER OF THE BOOK!) caused the war and are wholly responsible for it. Why? Because they're arrogant! That's right: geopolitical strategy isn't related to the social status quo or massive profit. No, it rests on the shoulders of small-minded people, blinded by HUBRIS!

Please.

GWB and most of his cabinet are nothing more than window dressing for the naive and stupid. Why would anybody who intends to acquire and maintain actual power centralize it to the single prominent office of a recognizable individual? That's no way to wield power. But a wide variety of lobby groups (AIPAC and the Energy Lobby as a whole being the most prominent of these) certainly know how to wield and direct power: indirectly, and with deep pockets. And there's certainly nothing illegal or secret about what they're doing! Summarily, the big problem resides less in our elected officials and more in a political system where policy is purchased by the highest bidder.

If you want to read a serious book on the subject of American imperialism and its' present proponents and consequences, check out Johnson's "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire," Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and even Moe's "The Organization of Interests."

In contrast with those excellent books, "Hubris" looks like what it is: "Politics For Dummies." It pairs a corny title with a cover featuring four neocon puppet icons that looks like a theatrical film poster for another of many cheesy "Reservoir Dogs" ripoffs. Am I the only one who thinks that this thing looks absolutely stupid? It's no surprise, either: authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn write for "Newsweek," and "Mother Jones" and "The Nation," respectively. The fluff entertainment credentials of these two lightweights are intact. I can only wonder if these hacks are actually stupid enough to believe this nonsense or if they're just trying to make a quick buck by feeding the more gullible of the anti-war set more of what they already believe.

The latter would be less insulting.

Historically, when we use hubris to describe the actions or attitudes of specific individuals or groups, the connotation is rarely positive. The term assumes a certain presumption, insolence, or pride; it imbues a reflection of superfluous vanity, of emboldened arrogance. In civilian industry, hubris denotes a business approach that borders on presumed entitlement; in political affairs, it reveals a purposeful disregard in the pursuit of policy. According to authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn, hubris is also the ideal descriptor for the Bush administration's road to war with Iraq.

The authors, two well-respected and widely published investigative reporters, offer an unbiased, albeit disconcerting, analysis of the personalities, events, and intelligence that led to our invasion of Iraq in 2003. Their revelations are as enlightening as they are disturbing; Isikoff and Corn argue that the ongoing war in Iraq is the product of premeditated intent, formulated conjecture, and selective intelligence. The actions of the Bush administration, according to the authors, are the truest representation of political hubris.

Hubris details the Bush administration's march to war with remarkable clarity and insight, linking individuals with events in a gripping narrative as captivating as it is provocative. From the use of flawed and manipulated intelligence to the covert practice of silencing dissenting views, the authors weave a tale of deceit, misdirection, and egotism that rivals both Fiasco and State of Denial. Whether presenting a pervasive account of the administration's exhaustive search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or exposing the truth surrounding the Valerie Wilson debacle, Isikoff and Corn redefine hubris in contemporary political and bureaucratic terms, drawing on language reminiscent of Woodward and Bernstein's expose on the Watergate scandal thirty years ago.

Isikoff is an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek and the author of the bestselling Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, which detailed his own reporting of the Monica Lewinsky Scandal in 1998. He writes extensively on the Global War on Terror and has published numerous reports on the Abu Ghraib scandal, campaign-finance abuse, and congressional ethics. He is also the co-author of the weekly online Web column "Terror Watch," recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists for best online investigative reporting in 2005. David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and a Fox News Channel contributor. He is a former correspondent for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Boston Globe; his book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception was a New York Times bestseller.

For military readers, Hubris is a book that will educate, entertain, and enthrall. For senior leaders, Hubris may be as enlightening as it is distressing. It is one book that qualifies as a "must read" for anyone in uniform and equally important for those who have served in the past. How our political leaders employ military power in the pursuit of national objectives is a matter of interest to all who serve; it is even more important when private citizens bring the reasoning behind that employment into question.

I don't have much more to add to the favorable reviews, but I do think it is worth pointing out that an unheralded attribute of this book is that it damns the mainstream media as much as it does the CIA/DOD/White House crowd. This is not a story is where the media come off looking like heroes while the government is the bad guy. The NY Times in general and Judy Miller in particular are shown in a less than flattering light, and are shown to be every bit as blameworthy for this mess as the usual suspects of Bush, Rove, Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld are considered to be.

I thought this was an excellent book, a good read, and it reminded me a lot of the old Bob Woodward style of reporting before he became the Bush hagiographer.

Michael Isikoff and David Cron have put together a compelling, detailed report of the faulty case for going to war with Iraq. If you want to know the story behind the various pieces of faulty intelligence that the Bush administration used to sell the war, this is the book for you.

This is a great case study for what happens when arrogant self-assuredness is married to deficient critical thinking.

It may very well have turned out that we would have eventually had to go to war with Iraq. But there was no compelling reason to do it at the time we did, and the reasons the Bush administration cited for going to war were all faulty and the information to suggest it was faulty was available all along, just ignored.

Unless you haven't read the newspapers for the last 4 years or so, this book is not worth the effort. A rehash of their and others work.

This title presents the reader with a basic rehash of public reported on stories regarding the administrations rush to war. After reading it, there was hardly anything new, rather there was a summary of all the events that took place regarding the WMD case and the subsequent investigations.

I have to say that the book made no compelling characters stand out, nor did it make anyone, aside from perhaps Karl Rove seem the bad guy. In fact it's annoying habit of making everyone seem equally guilty serves to cut hard edge out of the book. All in all I kept on reading expecting something new to come up or some succinct revelation to appear yet in the end all we saw was a rebroadcast of old news.

I see this is a best-selling book by two prominent journalists. It is shocking, then, that there is no mention in the book of either the "Downing Street Memo" from July 2002 which documents the fact that Bush, at least as far back is middle of 2002 (and many contend even earlier - when the Bushies came into office in January 2001 - wanting war with Iraq), had decided to go to war with the small details like the "cause" or "justification" for the war to be left up to the spin-meisters and Karl Rove.



Neither is the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) mentioned in the book. The PNAC is the Neo-Con, war-mongering think-tank which had advocated war with Iraq as far back as 1997-98.



It is sad that the Mainstream Media and the journalistic establishment has almost completely ignored the Downing Street Memo and the Project for a New American Century in their coverage and analysis of the Iraq war and the Bush administration. An even better book in this regard is Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild

I see this is a best-selling book by two prominent journalists. It is shocking, then, that there is no mention in the book of either the "Downing Street Memo" from July 2002 which documents the fact that Bush, at least as far back is middle of 2002 (and many contend even earlier - when the Bushies came into office in January 2001 - wanting war with Iraq), had decided to go to war with the small details like the "cause" or "justification" for the war to be left up to the spin-meisters and Karl Rove.

Neither is the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) mentioned in the book. The PNAC is the Neo-Con, war-mongering think-tank which had advocated war with Iraq as far back as 1997-98.

It is sad that the Mainstream Media and the journalistic establishment has almost completely ignored the Downing Street Memo and the Project for a New American Century in their coverage and analysis of the Iraq war and the Bush administration. An even better book in this regard is Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild

Whatever you think of Mike Isikoff's ultimate contentions & analysis regarding the adventures of Team Bush in the Middle East, you gotta admit the title is just killer.

Isn't it? HUBRIS. Wow. Just---wow.

No, stay with me on this: think of your worst, most hated Enemy (no silly, I admire your partisanship you Kos-Sack you, but it can't be Bush---at least not for *this* little mind-exercise).

Now imagine that Enemy getting you fired at work, sneaking into your house & introducing the sneaky snake to your wife (or the Great Oscillating Cavern of Tempation to your hubby), then killing your cat, burning your house down, & dancing up and down on the ashes.

Got that in mind? Good: now consider the word you would come up with to describe your Enemy's actions. Got that word in mind? Yes? Now: honestly, would it be 'Hubris'?

Yes? Great! Keep reading.

Isikoff has cobbled together an unsurprising critique of Bush war policy, which centers in on the primary flaw of BUSHIDO: the Bush guys, unlike the Clinton guys, did something against Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorists. Doing something in America these days---whatever it is---is dangerous. Risky.

This isn't really a nation of big tough he-men risking it all to make the world safe for big-D Democracy anymore: it's more like a bunch of trousered knats spending lotsa time flaunting their Lance Armstrong 'livestrong' love bracelets, cycling around in their girly-girly little tightpants, and jogging.

So as you can see, in the New America(tm), the old-fashioned BUSHIDO was doomed from the start. Isikoff's book is lovingly, brutally detailed, & pretty much supports the contention that Bush should have done absolutely nothing. Maybe lobbed a cruise missile or two 'over there', but that's about it. It's also boring.

But never mind that: if you don't groove on the title, you'll really be down with the cover art. Yeah, buy it for Reservoir Dogs-esque cover art. Dig it. Quentin Tarnantino couldn't have crafted a better shot of the BUSHIDO team ambling down a stretch of Dark Territory into the next big gunfight. You can just about hear the strains of "Little Green Bag" as Condi, W., Rummy, & 'Shotgun Dick' Cheney stride down the Road to pull off that one last Job, or to face down that Bad, Bad Man.

HUBRIS! The old Greek tragic flaw that brought down great heroes, like Oedipus, or Agisthus, or Agamemnon, or Jimmy the Greek.

HUBRIS! Fortunately Curious George's case of hubris isn't quite as nasty as, say, Oedipus, whose version of the old greek disease impelled him to whack Dad, nail Mom, and gouge his eyeballs out.

HUBRIS! But it's bad, evidently, really bad, because now we're mired in the much and quicksand and blood and sludge of Iraq, and the world really hates us, a stark turnaround from the morning of 9/11, when the Nasty Cowboy hadn't invaded anybody and the world loved us all.

Why not just say what you want to say, Isikoff? Why not just call your book "Axxholes"? Why 'Hubris'? Why weaken the whiskey? Why not just come out and say what you think, guys? How about "Dumbaxxes"? Or better still, "Lying Nazi Pigs"? Or better still, "Big Ugly Poopyheads"?

Isikoff brings the same eye for detail found in his book "Uncovering Clinton", back in the day when Isikoff was famous for rooting around in Bill Clinton's underwear drawer and saving fluid samples.

Fortunately, we don't get any stained blue dresses here, but we do get the usual whack-a-Bush talking points: basically 1) the Bush administration either manufactured evidence claiming Saddam had a WMD program; 2) All the Kings Men were either too sycophantic or too incompetent to investigate such claims and 3) consequently, we now find ourselves embroiled in the GREATEST MILITARY DISASTER OF ALL TIME! Yeah.

Anyhoo, though, there are a few mysteries raised by all of this Sturm Und Drang, signifying NICHT. Among them:

1)Alright, Isikoff skirts the line of calling Bush a liar, but only barely: the whole point of "Hubris" is that the Administration knew better---so if it wasn't mendacity they were guilty of, it was close to it. So Bush lied, fine.

But if you accept that---that Bush positively *knew* there were no WMDs in Iraq, and pushed for invasion anyway---then didn't he know the later revelation that Saddam didn't have a WMD program would make him look silly, or mendacious, or both? I mean, if he's gonna lie about the WMD program to begin with, why not have a couple of trusty guys in the black helicopters plant a few nukes on the scene, after the fact?

2)If the yardstick by which our success is measured is largely temporal---that is, our troops are still *there* dangit---then why are we still in Europe, Japan, & Korea? God knows Europe is a total basket-case, Japan is cranking out manga---have you seen that stuff, especially with the tentacles?---and they have Video-gamers Anonymous in Korea, so let's bring AlL the boys home, now!

3)Isn't it a bit of a stretch to contend that Saddam was a WMD virgin, given all the NOOK-lear proms in the region he'd gone too?

I guess that's one mystery too many for me. Poor planning, sure. But Greek Tragedy? I don't think so. I'm for readability, credibility, a touch of nerdability, and truth in advertising: a wonkish analysis would have been just fine in my book.

But from its stupid title, to its mind-bendingly dull writing, to its even duller thesis, to its complete lack of strategic imagination, "Hubris" gets a big fat "F". Or better yet, in the Greek spirit, "P." For Polymachus, Python, or Prometheus, you ask?

None of the above. For "Poop".

JSG

Isikoff and Corn give insightful information concerning what we know as the "War on terrorism/Iraq." This book describes in detail how the Bush administration lied, manipulated and distorted truth to start a war in the Middle East. This book should be a must read for every American citizen.

I'm going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the Mideast.
-President George W. Bush

Isikoff and Corn are reporters for Newsweek and the Nation, respectively. Their book, Hubris, is a fascinating look at the deception sold to the American people (and the world) in order to justify the case for war.

Having defeated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Bush was standing tall in the polls, with an approval rating hovering at 70 percent. The Evil Empire coined by Ronald Reagan was now the Axis of Evil-the trio of tyrannies, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, that Bush had proclaimed the nation's foes during his first State of the Union speech. Bush was preparing to go to war against these regimes, starting with Iraq.

One reporter asked, "Did the law mandate that the United States overthrow the Iraqi government by force?" Ari Fleischer responded, "Bush believes that the people of Iraq, as well as the region, will be more peaceful, better off without Saddam Hussein." The reporter then said, "That's not a reason to go to war."

"Well," Fleischer replied, "if you were the president, you could have vetoed the law."

To achieve their ends, the administration had to sell the American people on an unnecessary war by appealing to their deepest fears of a "mushroom cloud" over the United States. The Bush regime presented a case for war that turned out to be, in virtually every aspect, fraudulent.

(a) In October 2002, a file of documents from the U.S. embassy in Rome arrived on the desk of one of the State Department's senior nuclear proliferation analysts. The papers had been handed over by an Italian journalist, who had been given them by an informer who had, in turn, obtained them from a mysterious source in the embassy of Niger. The documents purported to show that Niger had signed a July 2000 deal to supply Iraq with 500 tons of yellowcake uranium -- about one-sixth of the African country's annual production and a key ingredient in a uranium-enrichment process that could provide Saddam Hussein's regime with a nuclear bomb. President Bush would use this claim in his State of the Union address in January 2003. These documents turned out to be fakes.

(b) The administration's repeated rhetorical that the Iraqi smoking gun might "come in the form of a mushroom cloud." There were no atomic bombs found in Iraq, nor was there any nuclear program in progress.

(c) Statements from Iraqi defectors, such as the informant known as "Curveball," that Iraq possessed mobile biological laboratories, turned out to be false. This claim was the centerpiece of then-secretary of state Colin Powell's U.N. presentation in February 2003. The authors show Powell's skepticism of the UN speech as the final sales pitch to sell the war. In fact, Powell later regrets having made that speech to the UN. He remains intensely bitter and angry about his UN Security Council Speech. He refused to have anything to do with CIA director George Tenet.

(d) The administration was convinced that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes was proof of a nuclear-arms program. It turned out that the tubes could not be used for nuclear arms. In fact, the tube order specifications were made public over the Internet and were handled through competitive bidding, hardly a top-secret contract. When confronted by DOE experts who concluded that the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium, one CIA analyst simply countered by stating that they were intended to utilize an older German approach. Despite disagreement from that German engineer and later tests by the CIA proving the DOE correct, the CIA analyst persisted in pushing his views, and most materials forwarded to the White House ignored DOE opinions.

(e) An Iraqi religious man, with a large following, took millions of dollars from the CIA to furnish them with information about Iraq and to have his followers side with the Americans. Even to religious people, money and power is God! Where are all the good and morale people?

(f) The administration claimed that the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague in April 2001 while he was there with his brother. It was later shown that Atta was never in Prague, and that he does not have a brother.

(g) The authors discuss in detail the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, and the leak that exposed her as a CIA spy. In fact, the authors dedicate almost a third of the book on Plame. Was the White House responsible for the leak? Plame's case shows the deceit, power struggle, and revengeful intents of politicians.

(h) The CIA came close to recruiting Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, to be an American spy. Through a Lebanese journalist, Sabri passed word to the CIA's station chief in Paris that Iraq had no active nuclear or weapons of mass destruction programs. But senior CIA and White House officials dismissed the intelligence and opposed the effort to recruit Sabri, fearing it would undercut the case for an invasion.

(i) There were no trailers found in Iraq that were mobile bio-weapons labs.

(j) Chalabi had been convicted of a $300 million bank scam in Jordan, conned the U.S. out of millions in 1995 to cause an Iraqi revolt, might have been an Iranian spy, and hadn't been back to Iraq in decades. Despite this, many in the CIA believed in his insights and potential leadership of post-war Iraq.

(k) The authors show the poorly researched stories by Judith Miller in the New York Times (often based on Chalabi sources), and her imprisonment (for around 80 days).

This book is a required reading for all those who want to know what the war in Iraq was really about.

Authors Isikoff and Corn lay out the enormous web of Bush administration's wrong doings in such a way that the book is as hot as a John Grisham novel. For those who still support George W. Bush, be warned: If just one-quarter of this book is true, the Bush-Cheney White House will go down as the most despicable administration in U.S. history.
Now with rich reporting of this caliber, the editors are at fault for not inserting more dates. A timeline of events would have been a splendid addition to the cast of characters which list is provided at the front of the book. A book as valuable as HUBRIS ought to have been handled like a good history. Yes, that means footnotes. Ok, you say you hate footnotes and so you don't agree. Well then, imagine reading this book in ten years time: If in ten years time you selected this volume to read to understand what happened during the Bush years, you might be disappointed because this book will not age well.
So, two great reporters with a sensational story to tell have been shortchanged by their editors--this book is a huge magazine article, when it ought to have been an enduring history.
All that aside, HUBRIS is a must. Read it, then read John Pilger's FREEDOM NEXT TIME.

This book fills in the details and makes more coherent the sporadic events from the lead-up to the Iraq War through the Valarie Plame scandal. Much of it is based on undisclosed sources, and as such, can be taken with a grain of salt. But, however you shade what happened behind the scenes, the results are hardly deniable: the Iraq War has been a disaster and what was sold to the American people was if not outright lies, at least falsehoods produced by incompetent leaders.

The two pressing reasons that the Bush Administration gave for its headlong rush into war with Iraq (even though the war in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda was ongoing and unresolved) were: Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing WMDs and there was an operative link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. As David Kay established in his investigation after the occupation and Charles Duelfer verified, none of the dire claims that the Administration made concerning WMDs had any substance. The unlikely claims concerning the jihadists of al-Qaeda being in close collaboration with the secularists of Saddam Hussein's Iraq also fell apart and have no substantiation.

The story we get here depicts George W. Bush as one who is above the nitty-gritty details and therefore incapable of insight into what is actually happening; a President who specializes in sweeping statements and emotional inclinations. The White House above all is a political engine run by Karl Rove, if not by anyone else. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney and his tentacles (particularly Libby, Wolfowitz, and Feith) work behind the scenes, snooping into matters of the Intelligence agencies, exerting their neoconservative influence. Their obsession with Saddam Hussein as being the main instigator behind all Islamist terrorist acts seems to be based on theories put forth by an "eccentric academic" Laurie Mylroie, and on the encouragement from a "self-styled exile leader" Ahmad Chalabi, who as it turned out, also had ties to Iran. They also had something of a perfect echo chamber in the articles put forth by Judith Miller in the New York Times. The time is soon after 9/11 and there is paranoia and fear in the air. Moderates such a Colin Powell and the entire State Department as well as George Tenet get sucked into this anti-Saddam crusade.

The claim that Iraq sought to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, which underlies the Valarie Plame scandal, was only one of what turned out to be a number of bogus claims. Like other instances - including the aluminum tubes, falsely presented as being intended for use as nuclear centrifuges, or Iraqi mobile chemical/biological weapons labs, springing from an easily discredited source named "Curveball" - the alleged procurement by Iraq of yellowcake uranium found a life of its own in the Intelligence services. Even though it was something of an outrageous claim, it kept popping up, as in the President's State of the Union speech just before the War started.

The book answered a number of lingering questions I had concerning the outing the CIA undercover counterproliferation (how ironic!) agent Valerie Plame. There is little question that Karl Rove leaked the identity of Joseph Wilson's wife before Robert Novak's article appeared in print. Matthew Cooper's notes from a phone conversation, as quoted in this book, clearly record the leak. The problem is that the law is written so narrowly that the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was disinclined to bring the case to court. The same reasons for not charging Richard Armitage or Novak also applied. In any event, the fact that Joseph Wilson challenged the Administration's reasons for going to war made his wife in Rove's words "fair game".

I figured since I bash Cheney, Rove, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz so much, I should probably at least be informed about the decisions made leading up to the Iraq War. Especially, if I want to have any intellectual and informed legs to stand on as I resist it now. To be honest, I picked up the book hoping it would solidify my preconceived views on this administration. And I was honestly expecting something biased. It was anything from it. One of the authors (Michael Isikoff) wrote a scathing book on the Clinton administration calling Clinton an "idiot" and the other (David Corn) was a Fox News contributor . So the authors definitely were liberal partisans. They then lay out all of the evidence (or lack of evidence) that we had going into the war in Iraq. It shows how certain members in the Vice-President's office intentionally manipulated evidence. The information used is not just here-say. Or anonymous tips. People go on record. Evidence is quoted that is pre-dated to before the time of invasion. So it's all legit stuff. And it's extremely, extremely eye-opening. I would encourage every conservative to read it so that they know what exactly goes on behind the scenes. And every liberal to read it so that next time they grow a set and stand up instead of worrying about election year politics. My only complaint is that the book is well over 400 pages and the last 100 feel extremely heavy. Almost burdensome. I'm not sure it was the content in the last 100 pages or that after 300 pages of lies and deceit I was just so tired of it at that point. Either way, it's a long, heavily citated read.

Every American citizen and all voters especially should read this to discover how tragically manipulated and lied to we have been regarding the Iraq War. While the book is excellent, prepare yourself because the story it tells will turn your stomach. Quite detailed and well researched.

On page 32; "An NIE is the summary of the intelligence community's knowledge on any given issue, its most comprehensive assessment of an important subject."

The NIE on the Iraq threat was not produced until requested by senators Durbin and Graham. (page 32)

page 137. NIE not read by Bush. Most members of Congress also did not read it.

It is sad that most legislators did not read this NIE. If they had, they would have encountered several dissents that questioned the Bush administration's arguments that Iraq possessed WMD and might not have voted for the legislation that gave Bush the power to use military force in Iraq.

I listened to the unabridged audio version of this book during my commute over several weeks. It was difficult to turn off when I got to where I was going. The authors performed incredible research for this book and compiled it into a very readable (listenable) account. The prose flows easily and is organized into a logical, chronological tale that ties together a chain of events that, were it fiction, would be called totally unbelievable. The story of how the administration made up its mind to go to war, and then set about to convince Congress and the public to go along provides a rare glimpse into decision making at the highest levels of our government. Like sausage making, it isn't pretty, but at least the account sheds some light onto the all too human tendency to only look at evidence that supports what one already believes. This book provides a fascinating slow motion account of a train wreck in progress. You know from history what is going to happen, but you feel the frustration of being unable to prevent it.

I don't want to reopen the whole debate about whether or not the war was justified and start parsing words like "lie", "mislead", or "mistake." Most people who followed the whole series of events already have pretty strong opinions about what happened and are almost impervious to changing their mind. But I would challenge both sides to read this book with an open mind. The book IS written by authors (especially Corn) who come at the issue from the left (the only think keeping me from giving the book 5 stars), but I have yet to see any account from the right that is this comprehensive in defending the administration.

My view of the whole affair after reading the book (staring from a point more toward defending the Administration) was sadness and disillusionment with just how little evidence there really was to back up decision to go to war at the time. But you also see the fear of the White House in not wanting to fail to respond forcefully to any possible threat in a post 9/11 world. To me the biggest disappointment was the total failure of anyone involved in the decision making to own up to their failures both in appraising the threat form Iraq or in their overoptimistic lack of planning for an insurgency that they basically tried to wish away in the planning and early aftermath. The only think we get is the same tired old phrase "Mistakes were made."

Books like this are needed now and in the next decade as the ultimate type of "lessons learned" study. Anyone serious about issues of war and peace and how we respond as a nation to a world of shadowy threats, some phantoms and others all too real, needs to read this book. We will face all too many similar scenarios in the near future.

I've read lots of books on the war, on the administration etc. I didn't find a whole lot of "new" information in this one compared to the other books that I've read. But I did like the way the book sort of brought it all together. It weaved together various parts of the Iraq intelligence scandal in a way that told a cohesive story. If you're an informed American, you've probably heard all of this before, but you probably haven't heard it all told in such a way that lays all the pieces of the puzzle out there so they fit together. This book puts facts together such that a person can see the entire picture. Instead of viewing the intelligence failure, the Plame scandal, Tenet's "slam dunk" and the "mushroom cloud" instances as separate scandals, I came to see the way everything sort of fit together.

I didn't think the book was bloated. Sure, there was a lot in there that I'd heard before, but the way it was weaved together to tell the story helped put things in perspective for me. I found that the book was a fairly meaty read - not something I wanted to skim. I enjoyed reading this book.

A great book; very easy to read - especially after reading "State of Denial."

For obvious reasons, Michael Isikoff wants to dot every i, cross every t, and review every interview and review the reviewer and review the sources the reviewer used. I thought that this would be a book to straighten out a complicated history; instead, it is a meticulously organized and documented prosecutor's case worthy of being taken to any judge and any jury as it stands. In spite of being far more detail than I wanted, making obscure the proverbial forest with infinite trees, this was much less tedious as an audiobook than I suspect it would be as a read. It well served my original purpose, if I took it a CD at a time. (There are 15 CDs.)

Reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn have written one of the most detailed and in many ways the most damning accounts of the Bush Administration's machinations leading to the Iraq war, and the lengths that some, particularly the Vice President and his minions, would go to suppress dissenting opinions.

A significant part of the book provides the most detailed account yet of the events that led to the trial and conviction of Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and of the missteps on the part of many in the bogus tale of an Iraq-Niger agreement to ship yellowcake, lightly enriched uranium, to Iraq. This is a fascinating read in itself, but the authors also devote attention to little known items--the mindset of an academic, Laurie Mylroie, who believed that only she had discovered the "truth" about the connections between Saddam Hussein and world terrorist attacks. Other culprits in this fiasco are also dissected in well-written detail, the infamous source "Curveball," Douglas Feith and his intelligence unit discovering all sorts of intelligence gems overlooked by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the wiles and acceptance by the Administration of the sources provided by Ahmed Chalabai, the Iraqi power-seeker whose main aim was to have the United States unseat Saddam, and the visceral feeling of hatred on the part of the George W. Bush towards Saddam Hussein.

An oft-told story, sad to relate, of how powerful assumptions and wishful thinking can drive policy, and of the serious consequences of where these biases and mindsets lead. In other words, this book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the events of the past few years. Although it is not the most inclusive of the numerous books on the lead-up to the Iraq war, nor of the consequences of our occupation, it is one of the best written and thoroughly sourced--as far as one can tell--of the increasingly lengthening shelf of books on what is surely destined to be one of the more tragic and blunder-filled episodes in the history of American foreign policy.