To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq

ISBN: 0525561064

Author: Draper, Robert

Condition: New

Essential . . . one for the ages . . . a must read for all who care about presidential power. -The Washington PostAuthoritative . . . The most comprehensive account yet of that smoldering wreck of foreign policy, one that haunts us today. -LA TimesOne of BookPage's Best Books of 2020To Start a War 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 naveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. Robert Drapers 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 W. Tuchmans The Guns of August and Marc Blochs Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective scurrying for evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false-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.