Books About The Iraq War

As the United States has become a belligerent and lawless force under George W. Bush, the Canadian government has followed in close step. Attempting to please our powerful neighbour, Ottawa has abandoned Canada’s traditional rôle as a leading peacekeeping nation and instead adopted a more militaristic, warlike stance, battling insurgents in Afghanistan as a junior partner in the U.S. war on terror Ottawa has also abandoned Canada’s traditional attempt to be a fair-minded mediator, most notably in the Middle East. And it has joined the United States as a leading obstructionist in worldwide efforts to tackle global warming. Altogether, there’s been a dramatic shift in the way Canada operates in the world, as our country has been transformed into a helpful assistant to an aggressive U.S. power, increasingly out of sync with our European allies and with the rest of the world.

This new rôle has been actively encouraged by powerful members of our elite who want to incorporate us more deeply into America’s military and economic empire. As Washington runs roughshod over international law, with its imperial wars, illegal prisons and torture, they want Canada to stand by helpfully, holding the bully’s coat.

Woodward has written a number of previous books praising Bush, but now he has had a second look and has decided Bush has been deceiving the American public about the Iraq war. The Iraq war is accomplishing nothing and gradually getting more and more violent.

George W. Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war.

It reveals that former Chief of Staff Andrew Card talked to Bush on two different occasions about replacing Rumsfeld. Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and even Laura Bush supported the decision, but it didn’t happen.

McQuaig points out that for decades Washington has been intensely focused on gaining control of the oil reserves of the Middle East. That focus took on new urgency under the Bush administration, with its close ties to Big Oil, including a vice-president who’s gotten rich going back and forth between Big Oil and the top echelons of the U.S. government. The urgency was driven by the fact that the vast oil reserves of Iraq — the last unharvested oil bonanza left on earth — were in the process of being parceled off to foreign competitors.

Iraq represented the alluring prospect of future energy security for the United States, even as America’s own oil reserves were dwindling. And, with potential profits in the range of $100 billion a year, Iraq also represented the future of the oil industry. In the words of Wall Street oil analyst Fadel Gheit, Iraq is the big dance. Everyone wants to be there.

But the U.S. oil giants hadn’t been invited to the big dance. Instead, Saddam Hussein had been busy making deals with oil companies from other nations, including America’s arch-rivals: China, Russia and France.

All this was on the minds of top executives of the big U.S. oil companies when they met, amid great secrecy, with Dick Cheney and his task force on energy, which had been set up within days of the new administration taking office. Although the administration has fought fiercely to prevent information about the deliberations of the task force being released, task force documents obtained under court order reveal an intense focus on Iraq and the question of how to gain control of its massive reserves — even as the administration was drawing up plans for toppling Saddam.

All this was underway, months before the attacks of 2001-09-11.

Greg Palast made his mark exposing the fraud in the 2000 US presidential election.

Here he shoots buckshot into the Bush administration. One of the most interesting salvos is his discovered of government documents proving the Iraq war was fought for price fixing — to limit the flow of oil to raise oil prices and deliver the highest profit of any corporation in world history to Exxon.

To get a sampling of what the book is about, watch this Amy Goodman NPR interview with Palast.

• Over 2,000 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and over 14,000 have been wounded.
• Nearly 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion.
• One in six soldiers returning from Iraq experiences mental health problems.
• Two-thirds of all recruits receive no college funding from the military and only 15 percent graduate with a four-year degree.
• According to the VA, 90 percent of recent women veterans reported experiencing sexual harassment; a third were raped.

1. An inability to protect its citizens.
2. The belief that it is above the law.
3. A lack of democracy.

1. reckless dependency on shrinking oil supplies
2. milieu of radicalized religion (the Christian right)
3. reliance on borrowed money (domestic and international debt)

Michael Scheuer was head of the bin Laden unit at the CIA until 2003. He chastises the politicians for feeding the public nonsense about bin Laden’s motives. They have nothing to do with American lifestyle, desire to curtail American freedom or desire to proselytise Islam.

He explains that Osama bin Laden is a competent, religiously motivated, charismatic leader. It is foolish to try to dismiss him as a madman or a criminal. You will never understand what makes him tick that way.

Al Qaeda is primarily a defensive organisation. Again pretending otherwise keeps you from understanding them.

bin Laden’s five demands are quite specific, but few people pay any attention to:

1. End all aid to Israel.
2. Withdraw military forces from the Arabian Peninsula and all Muslim territory.
3. End all involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
4. End U.S. support for the oppression of Muslims in China, Russia, India and elsewhere.
5. restore Muslim control of the Islamic world’s energy resources for the benefit of Muslims.

He points out the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a huge gift to bin Laden because it has just tied down more U.S. forces that otherwise could be fighting Al Qaeda. Further, it proved bin Laden’s claim that the U.S.A. is aggressively targeting the Muslim world.

In response to a request from Cheney’s office, the CIA sent former ambassador Joe Wilson to investigate the possibility that Niger was selling uranium to Saddam.

Wilson reported back that the letter alleging that was obviously a fake. It was not even signed by the right bureaucrats. Further, Niger had no uranium to sell. France had long ago bought up the entire supply.

The Italians had a copy of the letter and it was obvious to them it was a forgery. They were puzzled why the high tech experts in the CIA were taking it as genuine. So they wrote and presented their evidence that it was a forgery.

Yet Bush went ahead anyway, pretending it was genuine.

Wilson went public and Scooter Libby, Cheney’s top aide, outed Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, thus endangering her life and those of her fellow agents.