Books : War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

Rating: - Book mentions (on page 188) Saddam's little remembered but important 1994 attempt to reinvade Kuwait!
This attempt of his showed he was still internationally dangerous years after Desert Storm. It is also mentioned in the 2008 New York Times Almanac (in the Kuwait section).

On other points, there is a mention of how the US seized a ship in 2003 (a ship which was carrying centrifuge parts) to Gadhafi's Libya! This book explains how the ship's seizure lead Libay to disarm wmd-wise! True and so did the very occupation of Iraq by the US and allies (see books like Shopping for Bombs, Surrender is not an Option and former CIA-head Tenet's own memoir book 'At the Center of the Storm' plus a webpage called "How Gadhafi lost his groove" for more on this).

PS The ship's name, not given on the page the seizure was mentioned on, is the BBC China!

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Rating: - Articulate Vindictive Oblivious but Ultimately Necessary Reading
This book is essential reading for historians and those concerned with national security reform. It is not recommended for normal people, including those that have strong political views one way or the other. You will get much better value simply by reading reviews of a 100 related books starting with the ten below, and buying the book Fixing Failed States and checking out the reviews of the books I recommend there.

I read the Index after the Table of Contents and before I actually read the book. It became immediately evident to me that:

1) The index stinks in not including place names like Jalabad, Tora Bora, Kandahar, etcetera.

2) The author has written a personal account that opens with a concise (even impressive) summary of the high points of "alleged" criticisms and conspiracy claims, but with the exception of Bob Woodward, I could not find a single other reputable author in the index (see my list of ten books below, a token of the 100+ books that generally refute most of what this author has to say at the external level). I have no doubt this author is honest and credible on the details he knows, but as with the Viet-Nam rejoinder, "so what", I really question whether the author--good man that he is--is at all in touch with reality. Baer, Bamford, Clarke, Ritter, etc. do NOT appear in this book's index or footnotes that I could find.

Getting into the book, I am immediately impressed by the existence of a supporting website (waranddecision.com just add the www) and I am generally very impressed with the level of detail, the sequencing of information, the able reference to those he talked with by name. There is no question in my mind about the authenticity of this book. The author speaks from his mind and his heart, he is not dumb, just self-centered.

As the book progresses, I am astonished by several factors:

1) Dick Cheney appears only 28 times in this book, and not before page 53. The Cheney-Rumsfeld relationship is one that was evidently not shared by the author. He consequently is oblivious to the reality that Dick Cheney orchestrated 935 distinct documented lies in the rush to war; and committed 25 distinct impeachable offenses, not least of which was leveraging the nine advance warnings of the plans to attack the World Trade Center to allow a Pearl Harbor.

2) I had to go forward to read Chapter 6 ("Why Iraq") because of the prominence of the author's claim of the many "proven" instances in which Iraq trained, supported, or financed terrorism, but I quickly note that the author makes no reference at all the many proven open sources, including the former President of Czechoslovakia, who totally trashed this assertion.

3) The author is actively deceptive on more than one occasion. He cites the New York Times as "evidence" while casually neglecting to mention that he is citing the notorious Judith Miller, a fellow traveler at least, if not an active agent of influence for Israel.

4) The author is critical of the CIA throughout the book, including Milt Bearden whom I happen to respect greatly, and while I myself think CIA needs to be burned to the ground, I do not respect the manner in which the author manages to completely disrespect by omission of three major facts:

+ CIA got it right on WMD. Between the son in law that defected and the 30+ legal travelers that Charlie Allen orchestrated, CIA established without a shadow of a doubt that they kept the cookbooks, poured the stocks into the river (something that will have downstream impacts for decades), and were bluffing for regional sake. Since Rumsfeld and Cheney delivered the original WMD supplies and the joke is they kept the receipts, what I see here is an elegant concealment of the reality that the Pentagon was not about to listen to the CIA no matter what. The fact is that the professional CIA got it right, George Tenet sacrificed his integrity, and the White House was able to ignore secret intelligence because both the CIA professionals and the Pentagon's flag officers drank the koolaid and confused loyalty with integrity to their Constitutional oaths of office. ALL of our checks and balances failed us.

+ The author infuriates me with the manner in which he blatantly misleads the reader about how he and Rumsfeld triumphed in pushing for both early precision targetting inside Afghanistan, and the push to Kabul prior to the winter. He is maliciously evil in failing to credit the CIA teams that are described in "First In" and "Jawbreaker" and he can be excused for not being told that Putin told Bush he could take Kabul before the winter. Obviously the author does not read widely, and one can understand how immersed he might be in the reality of his own creation.

+ He misleads the reader in parroting Ahmed Chalabi's accusations against the CIA, while failing to point out that CIA fired Chalabi for stealing and lying; that Chalabi was convicted in Jordan for embezzlement; and that Chalabi is almost certainly a very well paid agent of influence for Iran, one reason most in Iraq's leadership circles want nothing to do with him.

In passing, there is no mention in this book of our love fest with 42 of 44 dictators; there is active (virulent) hatred for Colin Powell and Rich Armitage (I would follow either over any hill), nor is there any mention, as the book draws to a close, that ignorant treasonous rendition and torture aside, the score for nailing terrorists right now is CIA 40+, DoD zero (I may not know of one or two).

I bought and labored through this book because James Schlesinger recommended it and because it may be the only book among the 100 or so I have read circling the sordid regime from 2000-2008, that comes from one of the avowed "insiders." I give the author high marks for his homework, his documentation, and his writing.

Doug Feith is what you get when you agree to elect one man who picks a few cronies that pick other cronies who in turn orchestrate their kind of crony in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere. In Singapore, I am told, one must have a Master of Business Administration before being qualified to run for Parliament. We don't need to go that far. I believe that in the General Election, we must demand that Presidential candidates appoint a Cabinet in advance of election, at least three of whom must participate in the debate process (State, Defense, Attorney General), *and* they must produce a balanced budget proposal for public scrutiny at least 90 days before Election Day. It's time to put Citizen Wisdom back into the Republic.

See also, apart from my lists on Dick Cheney, impeachment, strategy, emerging threats and so on, the following ten books:
DVD Why We Fight
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
A Pretext for War : 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

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Rating: - Looking Back not Reflecting
This book is an absolutely fascinating look into the chain of reasoning following 9/11 that led to the declaration of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), the most tangible manifestation of which has been Operation Iraqi Freedom. Up front Feith presents his (and apparently Rumsfled's) theory that, "All organizations involved in international terrorism could be considered in partnership with others in that business (i.e. terrorism)" apparently regardless of religion, motivations or targets. Feith later (page 229) explains this network as incorporating al Qaeda, other Islamic `Jihadists' and non-Islamic Groups. The GWOT then is literally that, a U.S. world war against all groups using terrorism as their principal tactic as well as any state that sponsors them. Feith then identifies the principal strategic goal of the GWOT as to prevent another catastrophic attack against the U.S. or its interests. This apparently is the source of the administration doctrine of preemptive war or "anticipatory self-defense" as Feith calls it. Following this logic, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was identified as a state sponsor of terror and also a threat to U.S National Security in its own right. If Feith is accurate, this was the driving force behind Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Now Feith also provides the reader with some really intriguing though not necessarily accurate accounts of the deliberations that went on in the build up to Operation Iraqi Freedom and its immediate aftermath. By his own account, Feith was a strong backer of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress as the government in exile best suited to take over after the fall Saddam Hussein. His faith in what he calls "Iraqi Externals" was apparently boundless.

Feith also expresses his extreme dissatisfaction with the intelligence provided by CIA prior to the war. He denies that he ever claimed that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, but he did claim that Iraqi was a state sponsor of terrorists. For this reason he agreed with his superior, Paul Wolfowitz that an Iraq-al Qaeda connection ought to be looked into as their feeling was that CIA was not willing to do so. To this end he directed a loan-in analyst from DIA to conduct a review of all the intelligence on this connection. The analyst literally did this by compiling a list of all the reporting that indicated an Iraqi-al Qaeda connection. But in what could called an incredible omission, the analyst failed to compile a similar list of the reporting that contradicted those reports or indeed to subject the reports that had been compiled to any sort of critical analysis. This is pretty well how Feith conducted all of his official business.

Feith is a reasonably good writer, but he appears utterly unreflective and arrogant. Yet his book does provide unique insights on why Iraq was considered so important to the GWOT.

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Rating: - Boring, Tendentious, Self-serving
Douglas Feith was one of the key architects of the war. His Office of Special Projects was responsible for manipulating the intelligence in such a way that he could defeat skeptics like Powell, Tenet and the American people.
In this endless snoozer, he apologizes for nothing and argues that if the war he had planned had actually been implemented, all would be well.
His disrespect for the military is glaring. At every step of the way the brass had serious problems and reservations but Feith, Harvard educated, knew he was smarter and ignored the brass.
But this is a book so it rises or falls on its readability. This is the most boring book ever. I only read it because I had to (job reasons). If you don't have to, read Tenet's or one of the other memoirs of the Iraq debacle. You'll never get through this one.

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Rating: - NOT HIS FAULT!
Douglas Feith was a major participant in the planning of the invasion of Iraq. His book, "War and Decision" gives some insight into how that unwise war was planned and implemented. The policy of forcing democracy onto a foreign nation was flawed from the beginning.

While his book is well written and contains 140 pages of footnotes to support his case, he makes it clear that everything wrong with the war was someone else's fault - not his.

In a 1994 interview with the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President Cheney said that if then President H. W. Bush had invaded Baghdad in 1991, it would have resulted in a "quagmire."

It seems that Feith and the other neoconservatives should have watched that interview sometime in early 2002.

Feith's contract as a professor at the school of Foreign Service at the Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. will not be renewed. It seems like the University realizes that his presence is a blot on the institution.

He has written an informative and compelling account of the war planning and implementation. It is too bad that he and the other neocons were too dumb to know what a mess it would create.

Author of: Mr. NewHeart (New Heart): Heart Attack to Transplant and Beyond

You may preview a free copy of my next book if you Google "david hollar the face of war." It will be a memoir of my year in Vietnam as an infantry officer.