History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces

Average customer rating:

Tons of interesting stuff, but...
well worthy
One of the Best books on the Special Forces
Why Special Forces are special
Excellent Book

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces
Linda Robinson
Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1586482491
Release Date: 2004-10-12

Amazon.com

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have given the U.S. Army's Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, a central role in American military action like never before. Several hundred U.S. Special Forces operators helped a motley band of Afghan rebels orchestrate a stunning rout when they overthrew the Taliban after 9/11. In Iraq, as journalist Linda Robinson explains in Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces, Special Forces units were the main U.S. elements on the ground in the northern and western regions of the country, where they defeated government forces that outnumbered them many times over. Robinson tells the story of the Special Forces through the eyes of a few of its more colorful personalities, men with call signs like Rawhide and Killer. She follows them around the world from Panama and El Salvador to Somalia, Kosovo, and, finally, Afghanistan and Iraq. Surprisingly, however, she devotes only a few pages to the Green Beret-led victory in Afghanistan, even though it was arguably their greatest achievement since they were created after World War II.

Critics and supporters of the recent American interventions alike should find the technical proficiency of the Special Forces interesting and impressive. Each 12-soldier team may marshal more than a century of combined experience in weapons, foreign languages, intelligence, communications, air control, and trauma medicine. For a book about such an action-packed subject, though, Robinson's effort is somewhat dry, and she devotes more time to mundane background biographies than to the dramatic battle scenes in which the Special Forces invariably find themselves. In addition, Robinson's "secret history" is an authorized and sympathetic one, and readers may be left wondering what she may have left out of her accounts in order to maintain her access. --Alex Roslin

Book Description

A journalist with unique access tells the gripping, never-before-told, inside story of America's elite troops in action -- from the nadir of their reputation after Vietnam to their preeminence today on the frontlines against terrorism around the world.

Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned troops from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know foreign languages and cultures and unconventional warfare better than any U.S. fighters, and while they prefer to stay out of the limelight, veteran war correspondent Linda Robinson gained access to their closed world. She traveled with them on the frontlines, interviewed them at length on their home bases, and studied their doctrine, methods and history. In Masters of Chaos she tells their story through a select group of senior sergeants and field-grade officers, a band of unforgettable characters like Rawhide, Killer, Michael T, and Alan -- led by the unflappable Lt. Col. Chris Conner and Col. Charlie Cleveland, a brilliant but self-effacing West Pointer who led the largest unconventional war campaign since Vietnam in northern Iraq.

Robinson follows the Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat in Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans to their recent trials and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing and unsung successes in southern Iraq, and recounts here for the first time the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Her blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never been told before. The most comprehensive account ever of the modern-day Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with riveting, intimate detail in the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all. AUTHOR BIO: Linda Robinson is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2000-2001 and in 1999 she received the Maria Moors Cabot prize form Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She has covered numerous wars, guerrilla conflicts and special forces operations, and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews:

Tons of interesting stuff, but..........2007-05-18

I guess I'm a fan of this book, but I can't make myself call it anything better than "good." There are some truly great parts, but I struggled through quite a bit. Maybe my expectations were too high, but this book didn't thrill me like I was expecting. I wanted a gripping, real-life story of the modern Special Forces in action. I only got that in doses. I hate to use this word, but I even found it "boring" at times.

well worthy.......2007-03-17

A very easy to read tense and exciting account of a snapshot in the life of these fairly extraordinary human beings. Written a bit in the style of b/hawk down it gives a glimpse of the other sides of the soldiers involved. A must for any admirer of good special forces lit.The book also provides a sneak preview into iraq and afghanistan All in all a great read

One of the Best books on the Special Forces.......2007-01-10

This is an excellent read on a very reclusive and elite group in the US Army. It details many great feats by many great men over the last 20 years. Linda Robinson does a great job at righting this book and keeping it interesting and flowing along and covers most everything in great detail without making the story drag.

Why Special Forces are special.......2006-12-30

This is a good collection of military stories covering the past fifteen years based on interviews with soldiers, official government documents and archival material. Some details are left out so as to protect security and identities of countries involvements in operations but overall it is a fun read for the military enthusiast.The activites of the Special Forces(aka Green Berets) is well chronicled but to a much lesser extent the exploits of the much more secret(to use a word from the title)Delta Force and Seal operations are discussed even though many operations are in conjunction with these other elite forces. Linda Robinson takes you globetrotting to witness "behind the scenes" how America's Special Forces is fighting terrorism throughout the world. Operations discussed through recollections and documents include Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, The Balkans, Afghanistan and of course Iraq. Recommended for an overview of the Special Forces various counterterrorism missions.

Excellent Book.......2006-11-10

This book is very exciting, because it tells us of the Special Forces missions that have happened most recently, and not just the ones we've heard about so much over and over again in the past. There are not very many in depth stories about the SF operations that have been conducted in Iraq/Afghanistan so it is nise to read about some of the action that we never heard about on the news. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about the SF and about the 'behind the scenes' war that went on and is still going on today.

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)

Average customer rating:

Check and see
Suprise! Suprise!
Prescient St Augustine?
Something of a disappointment
Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy..

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
Anatoly T Fomenko
Manufacturer: Delamere Resources LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 2913621066

Product Description

`History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2` is the second volume of the most explosive and astounding tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by rock solid scientific data. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it is well-illustrated, contains hundreds of charts, graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: - That the chronology universally accepted today and taken for granted is simply wrong; - That ALL methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact; - That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the XIth century; The Author refers to the Middle Ages as the Antiquity and proves mutual superimposition of the Second and the Third Roman Empire, both of which become identified as the respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Furthermore, he asserts that the famous reform of the Occidental Church in the XI century by Pope Gregory Hildebrand was the reflection of the XII century reforms of Byzantine emperor Andronicus who in his turn identifies with Jesus Christ. The Trojan war counted by Homer happened only as late as of the XIII century A.D. and the great poet actually lived in XIV century A.D. No stone in history of Antiquity is left unturned. Literally. This book is the beginning of a major correction to the chronology we live with.

Customer Reviews:

Check and see.......2007-06-21

I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.

Suprise! Suprise!.......2007-03-22

Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.

Prescient St Augustine?.......2006-02-05

We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:

a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;

b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;

c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.

Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:

It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.

- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.

- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.

Fomenko goes by the following axioms:

- Chronology is the basis of history;

- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;

- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;

- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;

- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;

- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.

Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?

The Russians:

Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.

The Westerners:

Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.

The Chinese:

Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.

The Arabs:

Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.

The Divinity:

Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.

St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."

Something of a disappointment.......2005-09-09

After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.

However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:

- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.

I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.

The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.

It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?

Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.

Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).

Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy.........2005-07-30

If you agree with Fomenko that Roman chronology is basically the foundation of the entire edifice of global chronology; you would also certainly agree that despite its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, Roman history is the best-documented field of ancient history, and thus a reference scale. But how well is the actual date of the Eternal City's foundation known?

Firstly, Rome is supposed to have been founded by the Trojans who had to flee after the fall of Troy. Some claim Rome to have been founded by Aeneas and Ulysses shortly after Troy had fallen; others are of the opinion that there was an entire dynasty that ruled for 500 years between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.

Well, that's just an innocent 500 years long misunderstanding compared with what heretic Fomenko says, asserts, proves in his second volume: Second Roman Empire, Third Roman Empire, Biblical Kingdom of Israel, Biblical Kingdom of Judah, Holy Roman Empire are stories about basically same events, written from different points of view at different times. The underlying events have actually taken place during xii-xv cy. These histories have been written and perfected by multitude of highly talented humanist and clerical writers of xiii-xvi cy disguised as "ancients" with glorious names like Homer, Pluto, Thucydides etc..Chronology 2.0 beta..

Historians are kindly invited to report the bugs.

Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq

Average customer rating:

All information in one single place
Exculpating fascists and religious fanatics...
Book of Revelation--after revelation; after revelation...
Ahmed's calendar: Third Day of the Condor = Apocalypse Now
Brilliant ,Erudite , Gripping.

Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Manufacturer: New Society Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0865715068

Book Description

Following the US declaration of a "war on terror," Washington hawks were quick to label Iraq part of an "axis of evil." After a tense build-up, in March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, purportedly to protect Western publics from weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But was this the real reason, or simply a convenient pretext to veil a covert agenda?

Using official sources, Ahmed investigates US and British claims about Iraq's WMD programs, and in the process reveals the hidden motives behind the 2003 invasion and the grand strategy of which it is a part. He shows that the true goals of US-British policy in the Middle East are camouflaged by spin, PR declarations, and seemingly noble words. The reality can only be comprehended through knowledge of the history of Western intervention in the region. Ahmed demonstrates that such intervention has been dictated ruthlessly by economic and political interests, with little regard for human rights. He traces events of the past decades, beginning with the West's support for the highly-repressive Shah of Iran, his subsequent usurpation by the Ayatollah's Islamist regime, and the West's resultant backing of Saddam Hussein. The sponsorship of Saddam's tyranny - a self-serving tactic intended to strategically counterbalance Iran - included the supply of technology to build WMD as well as tacit complicity in their use against Iranians and Kurds.

Ahmed's meticulous research into the secret history of Western maneuverings in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire reveals the actual causes of the first Gulf War, the humanitarian catastrophe created by the twelve-year sanctions policy against Iraq, and the consistent obstructions of the Oil for Food program. He also provides information on the West's own widespread use of WMD, and the likely culprits of the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US.

Customer Reviews:

All information in one single place.......2007-01-06

I have read news from different sources and this book doesnt bring anything to me but for a regular casual american this book would be an eye opener. If you had not opened your mind+eye and not followed news from the past 5-6 years, dont worry this book is a total collection of all of them in one single place.Also wanted to write my opinion, I agree that the western nations have been greedy from the beginning and exploited the eastern nations again and again. Now the biggest resource they are after is energy, and they would do anything to maintain their control over it. Its sad that these countries who call themselves civilized and christian are the same hypocrates who would kill at will, eat all the wealth, and enjoy at the expenses of other fellow mankind who they consider to be sub-human. But I think in the current situation the blame goes entirely to the arabs. All other countries have got independence, and kicked out the colonizers but the arabs have failed to do so to this day. Reason is their own mentality, they fight among selves and produce the stooges that western nations can easily use to exploit these arab lands. Always one or another guy would step up to be the subservient stooge. Because the arabs continue to be divided and look down upon others because they belong to some other tribe. If they can produce real leaders, and arab people open their eyes and especially their minds they wouldnt be so miserable today.It is so easy for the colonial powers to make them fight amongst each other and conquer. There will be always one guy who would be so selfish for his own tribe or community that he will be ready to kill other people in his own country because they are from a different tribe. One reviewer correctly put it, its the spirit of nationalism. Arabs lack it and thats the advantage of the western powers. People can oppress you ONLY if you allow them to.

Exculpating fascists and religious fanatics..........2005-12-24

While it is often recognized that a major consequence of US foreign policy since 9/11 has been the inflaming of Islamist and anti-American rage, another major consequence has gone rather more unnoticed, namely, the enormous impetus given to radical leftist views. Before 9/11 the champions of Leninist versions of "imperialism" were rightly marginalized as myopic extremists and secular fundamentalists. Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, publishing companies of all sizes and orientation have put to market an extraordinary number of books purporting to have unlocked the here-to-fore hidden or subtler reality of American imperialism. This book (all books) by Nafeez Ahmed is a great example of this genre.

As to the book's contents, the arguments are purely sophomoric, its tone, shrill, its language, infantile - all the problems of the world are the fault of US corporate/political/military dominance; this book "proves" it "objectively"; all those who disagree are immoral reprobates and "lackies" of the Bush Administration; if only the countries of the world ("slaves" all of them) could get from under the jackboot of the Americans we would all know the "truth" (not just us clever radicals) and the world would be free of oppression and injustice.

That this simple-minded rubbish has devotees (disciples, really) throughout the world is certainly depressing but should hardly surprise given the history and example of leftist, rightist, and religious fundamentalists from the last couple of centuries.

The methods employed here are pure Chomsky - no engagement whatever with the vast literature from its ostensible discipline-area (International Relations, in this case) or with opposing viewpoints; the "evidence" is overwhelmingly based on bits and pieces of "de-classified" memoranda from varying parts of the state during quite different eras and journalistic references to an extremely limited number of mostly like-minded sources; no analysis of politics to speak of - the politics of my community college being much more complex than his analysis of world politics; and, last but by no means least, the complete exculpation of the most brutal fascist dictators and fanatical jihadis - these being merely the by-product of US power.

As if all of this were not frightening enough for those who value complex and measured social scientific analyses and academic rigor, this chap actually describes himself as a "human rights activist". Well, with friends like Nafeez Ahmed, the oppressed have neither an ally nor a champion - the states and fanatics that wish only to oppress, however, have found both in this author. Much better to stick with the likes of Fred Halliday or Fawaz Gerges, that is, with authors that know what they're talking about.

Book of Revelation--after revelation; after revelation..........2004-11-15

Dr. Chris Knight, London
From BLOOD RELATIONS:
MENSTRUATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CULTURE

"[A] very selective history [as compiled here of 19th and 20th century presidents] demonstrates there are many varieties of presidential lies. Some concern grand policy matters, some concern secret government activity...Sissela Bok, the author of LYING: MORAL CHOICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE, defines [a lie] simply as "an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a STATEMENT (emphasis his)"...I would propose a slightly different standard for White House occupants. If a President issues a statement, he or she has an obligation to ensure the remark is truthful... It is not enough for a president or White House contender to BELIEVE what he is saying is true; he/she [like scientists, doctors, journalists and other professionals whose careers are built on a basic understanding of honesty, research, integrity and the public trust] should KNOW it to be true--within reasonable standards...Lying in office not only poses a potential risk for [a sitting president], a president who lies is a risk to the nation. He might steer the country into a war under false pretenses. Or, if he comes to be regarded as untruthful by a significant portion of the public, he might fail to rouse the country for military action that is indeed warranted. A liar in the White House is a national security threat."

David Corn
THE LIES OF GEORGE BUSH
From the Introduction
(Published in 2003, before
the start of the Iraq war)

"This [neoconservative] focus on reintergrating Iraq into the regional framework of order under US hegemony was no doubt heightened by the fact that Iraq challenged the US monopoly over the oil trade, maintained through the fact that oil transactions occur in US dollars. Since 1971...the dollar has...become the de facto world reserve currency... Overall, since the world economy is fundamentally oil-dependent, this...lends the US a dominant trading advantage...In November 2000, Iraq began trading its oil in euros, and profited handsomely in the process. Iran, Venezuela and Russia--all key oil producers--have also considered and/or moved towards switching to the euro..."

"The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq--or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network conglomerate wants a puppet government in Iraq--is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way..."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR
From Part Two, Chapter Seven: "False Pretexts"

and

Quote by
Wiliam Clark
"The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War
with Iraq: a Macroeconomic and
Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth"
Independent Media Center, January, 2003

"An objective assessment of the 2003 war in Iraq...shows clearly that it was nothing less than a...colonial enterprise, fundamentally opposed to elementary humanitarian principles and motviated by longstanding imperial values."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR
From the Postscript

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the Mozart-like prodigy of modern of political analysis, has done it again. Rivalling some of the best of Noam Chomsky, Michel Chussodovsky and Arundhati Roy... definitively making all non-scientific, non-factually based analysis of American foreign policy irrelevant at best, heinously (though ironically) unpatriotic and inhumane at worst... with almost six hundred footnotes rivalling the nearly seven hundred that helped prove his case in THE WAR ON FREEDOM, Ahmed lays the inhumanity of American foreign policy in Iraq bare for any American with the courage to read it, and discover the true nature of its leaders. And, for a world that must prepare its very lives for the worst in us.

COVERT ECONOMIC WARFARE AS INSTIGATOR OF MILITARY ACTION

Of the many painful and unquestionable facts revealed in this monumental book, the most important is the paradigm shift in American foreign policy perception waiting for people; a paradigm shift in perception that happens inevitably with the understanding of this one concept: economic warfare. In much the same way the concept of "emotional incest" dismantles the entire bedrock philosophy of Freudian psychology (where the children are supposedly asking for it), Ahmed shows how the United States, at the end of the Cold War, all but forced Kuwait to manipulate the oil prices in 1990 by dumping oil into the market at half its cost value, effectively bankrupting the Iran-war damaged, oil-based Iraqi economy. This form of overt economic warfare declared by Kuwait--and covertly supported by the US--demanded a response from Saddam Hussein that actually started with his protests in the United Nations (unliek his normally brutal methods)--but led inexorably to military invasion when Kuwait refused to stop as his people were starving, and the UN did nothing. And Hussein's 1991 invasion of Kuwait, as Bush, Sr. knew it would, rationalized a) the invasion of Iraq in 1991, b) the continuance of the military build-up in America after the end of the Cold War, and c) virtually all foreign policy in the Middle East to the present day. The culture killing sanctions--economic warfare part II--came next, and lasted until the present military war. Human life in the Middle East means less than nothing to most of the Bush administration--and little more to Europe as a whole.

I will say no more about this book except this: do not pretend to call yourself a believer in democracy of any kind until you find the moral courage to read it.

Ahmed's calendar: Third Day of the Condor = Apocalypse Now.......2004-11-11

"A SCIENTIFIC revolution, according to Kuhn [the scientist/linguist author of THE THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS], is not simply an addition to pre-existing knowledge. It is, within any field, 'a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals'; a complete demolition of an old theoretical and conceptual structure and its replacement by a new one based on entirely different aims and premises. The old paradigm...attacked from the outside...cannot be defeated on the basis of its own rules for, as we have seen...these rules are not only inadequate to solve new problems which have begun to arise--THEY ACTUALLY PRECLUDE ANY DISCUSSION OF THESE PROBLEMS AT ALL."

Dr. Chris Knight, London
From BLOOD RELATIONS:
MENSTRUATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CULTURE

"[A] very selective history [as compiled here of 19th and 20th century presidents] demonstrates there are many varieties of presidential lies. Some concern grand policy matters, some concern secret government activity...Sissela Bok, the author of LYING: MORAL CHOICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE, defines [a lie] simply as "an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a STATEMENT (emphasis his)"...I would propose a slightly different standard for White House occupants. If a President issues a statement, he or she has an obligation to ensure the remark is truthful... It is not enough for a president or White House contender to BELIEVE what he is saying is true; he/she [like scientists, doctors, journalists and other professionals whose careers are built on a basic understanding of honesty, research, integrity and the public trust] should KNOW it to be true--within reasonable standards...Lying in office not only poses a potential risk for [a sitting president], a president who lies is a risk to the nation. He might steer the country into a war under false pretenses. Or, if he comes to be regarded as untruthful by a significant portion of the public, he might fail to rouse the country for military action that is indeed warranted. A liar in the White House is a national security threat."

David Corn
THE LIES OF GEORGE BUSH
From the Introduction
(Published in 2003, before
the start of the Iraq war)

"This [neoconservative] focus on reintergrating Iraq into the regional framework of order under US hegemony was no doubt heightened by the fact that Iraq challenged the US monopoly over the oil trade, maintained through the fact that oil transactions occur in US dollars. Since 1971...the dollar has...become the de facto world reserve currency... Overall, since the world economy is fundamentally oil-dependent, this...lends the US a dominant trading advantage...In November 2000, Iraq began trading its oil in euros, and profited handsomely in the process. Iran, Venezuela and Russia--all key oil producers--have also considered and/or moved towards switching to the euro..."

"The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq--or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network conglomerate wants a puppet government in Iraq--is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way..."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR
From Part Two, Chapter Seven: "False Pretexts"

and

Quote by
Wiliam Clark
"The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War
with Iraq: a Macroeconomic and
Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth"
Independent Media Center, January, 2003

"An objective assessment of the 2003 war in Iraq...shows clearly that it was nothing less than a...colonial enterprise, fundamentally opposed to elementary humanitarian principles and motviated by longstanding imperial values."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR
From the Postscript

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the Mozart-like prodigy of modern of political analysis, has done it again. Rivalling some of the best of Noam Chomsky, Michel Chussodovsky and Arundhati Roy... definitively making all non-scientific, non-factually based analysis of American foreign policy irrelevant at best, heinously (though ironically) unpatriotic and inhumane at worst... with almost six hundred footnotes rivalling the nearly seven hundred that helped prove his case in THE WAR ON FREEDOM, Ahmed lays the inhumanity of American foreign policy in Iraq bare for any American with the courage to read it, and discover the true nature of its leaders. And, for a world that must prepare its very lives for the worst in us.

COVERT ECONOMIC WARFARE AS INSTIGATOR OF MILITARY ACTION

Of the many painful and unquestionable facts revealed in this monumental book, the most important is the paradigm shift in American foreign policy perception waiting for people; a paradigm shift in perception that happens inevitably with the understanding of this one concept: economic warfare. In much the same way the concept of "emotional incest" dismantles the entire bedrock philosophy of Freudian psychology (where the children are supposedly asking for it), Ahmed shows how the United States, at the end of the Cold War, all but forced Kuwait to manipulate the oil prices in 1990 by dumping oil into the market at half its cost value, effectively bankrupting the Iran-war damaged, oil-based Iraqi economy. This form of overt economic warfare declared by Kuwait--and covertly supported by the US--demanded a response from Saddam Hussein that actually started with his protests in the United Nations (unliek his normally brutal methods)--but led inexorably to military invasion when Kuwait refused to stop as his people were starving, and the UN did nothing. And Hussein's 1991 invasion of Kuwait, as Bush, Sr. knew it would, rationalized a) the invasion of Iraq in 1991, b) the continuance of the military build-up in America after the end of the Cold War, and c) virtually all foreign policy in the Middle East to the present day. The culture killing sanctions--economic warfare part II--came next, and lasted until the present military war. Human life in the Middle East means less than nothing to most of our administration--and not really much here as well, considering the current body count of our soldiers.

I will say no more about this book except this: do not pretend to call yourself an American of any kind until you find the moral courage to read it.

Brilliant ,Erudite , Gripping........2004-08-13

Author gives an excellent account of run up of events leading up to the Anglo-American assault on Iraq.Author's arguments unassailable based on irrefutable logic.

Economic considerations prompted US UK to invade Iraq.Of late US has become vulnerable to energy shocks with domestic production unable to cope with increasing demand.This has led to occasional blackouts in places like California.Prior to Iraq war America's oil inventories fell to the lowest level since 1975 with the country on the verge of drawing oil from 'Strategic Petroluem Reserve'

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was becoming what author says a ' swing producer'.In other words he was turning oil tap on and off whenever Baghdad felt that such a policy was suiting its interests.Hussein even contemplated removing Iraqi oil from the market for extended periods of time which would have sent crude oil prices soaring.

Besides Hussein began to challenge US monoply on oil trade.We all know oil trade is transacted in dollars.Hussein switched the trade to Euros.As a result dollar's value diminished by 17 percent.Were other oil-producing countries like Nigeria, Iran Venezuela to follow suit dollar's value would erode.Hussein's measures , in short, threatned America's economic , military pre-eminence.So he was ousted replaced by pro western stooge subservient Illad Allawi.

Bush- Blair team went to absurd lengths to justify invasion of Iraq.Intelligence on Iraq's WMD capability was cooked up distorted ,exaggerated to bolster case for war .Blair even had the gumption to claim that Iraq had lethal weapons which could be activated in 45 mts and was poised to strike British bases in Cyprus.An argument that sound ridiculous because we know from inde sources between a period from 1992-98 98 percent of Iraq WMD was destroyed along with infrastructure to make those weapons. Bush-Blair team ,I feel ,deliberately mislead their people to make a case for war.

Fact goes that Iraq could be invaded easily because it did not have weapons to defend herself.Britain US saw to it Iraq was fully disarmed begore unleashing their armies.In this they were helped by UN Security council which did the dirty work of disarming Iraq.It looks from this train of events that ' right to self-defence ' belongs to few coutries in the west.This a a covert form of racism.Be that may, US UK have taught coutries like N Korea ,Syria, Iran an ugly lesson better arm yourself with nuclear weapons if you want ot deter possible future hostile action.

What US UK want unfettered, unrestrained access to oil of resource-rich Middle East.What they fear most is indigenous nationalsm. Controlling the region by force is nothing but fascism and will not sove problems plaguing the region.It will breed resentment leading to vicious form of 'blowback'a term used by prominent American academic Chalmers Johnson.This term isused to denote negative inevitable consequences stemming from American imperial policies.

Author says it is possible to make western world immune to oilshocks.This can be done by exploring alternative sources of energy and changing fuel consumption patterns of people.

Book contains intersting facts pertaining to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,anthrax scare in US which many in the west may find hard to digest . Truth sometimes is unpalatable.

Average customer rating:

The Real Story of the Iraq War
Very Interesting
If you don't get IT, you won't get IT
Big questions still remain...
Difficult but Worthwhile

Secret History of the Iraq War
Yossef Bodansky
Manufacturer: Harper
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

Iraq | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0060736798
Release Date: 2004-06-15

Book Description

In the months leading up to March 2003, fresh from its swift and heady victory in Afghanistan, the Bush administration mobilized the United States armed forces to overthrow the government of Iraq. Eight months after the president declared an end to major combat operations, Saddam Hussein was captured in a farmhouse in Al-Dawr. And yet neither peace nor democracy has taken hold in Iraq; instead the country has plunged into terrorist insurgency and guerrilla warfare, with no end in sight. What went wrong?

In The Secret History of the Iraq War, bestselling author Yossef Bodansky offers an astonishing new account of the war and its aftermath -- a war that was doomed from the start, he argues, by the massive and systemic failures of the American intelligence community. Drawing back the curtain of politicized debate, Bodansky -- a longtime expert and director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare -- reveals that nearly every aspect of America's conflict with Iraq has been misunderstood, in both the court of public opinion and the White House itself. Among his revelations:

The most authoritative account of Saddam Hussein's support for Islamic terrorist organizations -- including extensive new reporting on his active cooperation with al-Qaeda in Iraq long after the fall of Baghdad
Extensive new information on Iraq's major chemical and biological weapons programs -- including North Korea's role in building still-undetected secret storage facilities and Iraq's transfer of banned materials to Syria, Iran, and Libya
The first account of Saddam's plan for Iraq, Syria, and Iran to join Yasser Arafat's Palestinian forces to attack Israel, throw the region into turmoil, and upend the American campaign
The untold story of Russia's attempt to launch a coup against Saddam before the war -- and how the CIA thwarted it by ensuring that Iraq was forewarned
Dramatic details about Saddam's final days on the run, including the untold story of a near miss with U.S. troops and the stunning revelation that Saddam was already in custody at the time of his capture -- and was probably betrayed by members of his own Tikriti clan
The definitive account of the anti-U.S. resistance and uprising in Iraq, as the American invasion ignited an Islamic jihad and Iran-inspired intifada, threatening to plunge the region into irreversible chaos fueled by hatred and revenge
Revelations about the direct involvement of Osama bin Laden in the terrorism campaigns in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East -- including the major role played by Iran and HizbAllah in al-Qaeda's operations

Drawing upon an extraordinary wealth of previously untapped intelligence and regional sources, The Secret History of the Iraq War presents the most detailed, fascinating, and convincing account of the most controversial war of our times -- and offers a sobering indictment of an intelligence system that failed the White House, the American military, and the people of the Middle East.

Download Description

In The Secret History of the Iraq War, bestselling author Yossef Bodansky offers an astonishing new account of the war and its aftermath -- a war that was doomed from the start, he argues, by the massive and systemic failures of the American intelligence community. Drawing back the curtain of politicized debate, Bodansky -- a longtime expert and director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare -- reveals that nearly every aspect of America's conflict with Iraq has been misunderstood, in both the court of public opinion and the White House itself. Among his revelations:

The most authoritative account of Saddam Hussein's support for Islamic terrorist organizations -- including extensive new reporting on his active cooperation with al-Qaeda in Iraq long after the fall of Baghdad

Extensive new information on Iraq's major chemical and biological weapons programs -- including North Korea's role in building still-undetected secret storage facilities and Iraq's transfer of banned materials to Syria, Iran, and Libya

The first account of Saddam's plan for Iraq, Syria, and Iran to join Yasser Arafat's Palestinian forces to attack Israel, throw the region into turmoil, and upend the American campaign

The untold story of Russia's attempt to launch a coup against Saddam before the war -- and how the CIA thwarted it by ensuring that Iraq was forewarned

Dramatic details about Saddam's final days on the run, including the untold story of a near miss with U.S. troops and the stunning revelation that Saddam was already in custody at the time of his capture -- and was probably betrayed by members of his own Tikriti clan

The definitive account of the anti-U.S. resistance and uprising in Iraq, as the American invasion ignited an Islamic jihad and Iran-inspired intifada, threatening to plunge the region into irreversible chaos fueled by hatred and revenge

Revelations about the direct involvement of Osama bin Laden in the terrorism campaigns in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East -- including the major role played by Iran and HizbAllah in al-Qaeda's operations

Drawing upon an extraordinary wealth of previously untapped intelligence and regional sources, The Secret History of the Iraq War presents the most detailed, fascinating, and convincing account of the most controversial war of our times -- and offers a sobering indictment of an intelligence system that failed the White House, the American military, and the people of the Middle East.

Customer Reviews:

The Real Story of the Iraq War.......2007-03-30

The problem with trying to ascertain what's actually happening with any national story is that the information received is filtered through the biases and agendas of the people disseminating it. Any political entity will put a favorable "spin" on the issue, while the mainstream media will report only those parts that align with its liberal left-wing worldview. One has to find a source that is both objective and complete.

Yossef Bodansky's "The Secret History of the Iraq War" is one of those complete and objective sources. In excruciating detail, Bodansky conveys the real story of the Iraq War behind the filtered headlines. He presents evidence to suggest that:

- Iraq did indeed have connections with al Qaida before 9/11, and WMDs before the Iraq War.
- Iran and Syria were sponsors of terrorists groups gearing up for more attacks on Israel before the invasion.
- Iraq's WMDs were moved to Syria before the invasion, therefore Bush did not lie about them being there.
- Poor intelligence and a fatal misunderstanding of Iraqi culture and social structure, along with arrogance and denial by the Bush administration led to the current problems America has now in Iraq.
- The war did, in fact, act as a magnet for terrorists around the globe to fight American forces in Iraq instead of planning attacks on American soil.
- That Syria and Iran are key agitators in Iraq to this day.

However incompetently the intervention has been in Iraq by the Bush administration, the overarching message of Bodansky's book is that the invasion was sufficient to upset the grandiose plans of Saddam Hussein, as well as terrorist groups and their state sponsors, Iran and Syria, to develop nuclear weapons and threaten Israeli and American interests. In that sense, the invasion did its job.

This book is uncited, and those who don't like what they're reading may dismiss his accounts out-of-hand since they can't be corroborated by the reader. Bodansky explains that "precise notation of all sources is inadvisable in this kind of writing, specifically because doing so could endanger the safety and survival of the human sources." Given the sensitive nature of the information he presents, "The omission of precise source notes is the least one can do." The reader will simply have to trust the reputation and credentials of the author.

This book is not a fun read. It's long, the details can be mind-numbing and the reader needs a program to keep track of all the al-Whosits (thus the three-star rating.) But the reader who successfully completes the book will have an unblemished understanding of all the machinations and drama that form the real story of the war, and if that's your goal, then this is the book for you.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-09

This is an interesting book. Anyone who is interested in an alternative to the right wing talk radio and tv news should seriously consider checking out the Thom Hartmann radio show opposite Rush Limbaugh weekdays at: thomhartmann dot com / showlisten.shtml

Whether democrat, republican, or indepedent, so many of the facts out there are completely ignored by the mainstream media and talk shows. This show is one strong example of an examination of the facts regardless of your political affiliation. I am not affiliated with the show in any way, just struck by the facts so many seem to ignore.

If you don't get IT, you won't get IT.......2007-01-18

Mr. Bodansky, in stunning detail, reveals the nature what we face in the Middle East. After years in pursuit of insight into the true nature of the Middle Eastern Terrorism threat this book provides the best source ever for thoughtful people to absorb and think through what we face. Yes, the book addresses a variety of issues not the least of which is the many mis-steps our political and intelligence leadership made. But the real value of the book is the sense of context that results from a careful reading. If your interested in "Gettin It" in terms of the dynamics and threats that are present in tbe Middle East, this book is a MUST.

Big questions still remain..........2006-08-21

The Secret History of the Iraq War covers the period of mid-2002 to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. The edition I read had an afterword that included (briefly) some of the events to May 2004. Therefore, the book leaves us mid-stream and a lot of things that have happened since are not covered (for example, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, the 2004 election, etc).

The main value of this book is the explanation of the Arab point of view, and Bodansky does a good job of explaining why the Arab world and Iraqi people didn't support the US more in our efforts to topple Saddam, as hated as he was. The American perspective is almost totally ignored, except to say where Bush & Co. got it wrong and misread the situation. The evidence presented by Colin Powell to the UN is not analyzed (and is barely even mentioned), and the administration are portrayed as single-minded warmongers.

To read the book, it makes it sound like Iraq was practically dripping with chemical weapons, which magically disappear without a trace. Bodansky's explanation for this is less than satisfying. Furthermore, Bodansky expects us to believe that he knew all this, but somehow US intelligence did not (or chose to ignore it).

Read it for a glimpse of the Arab perspective, but wait for a more authoritative history to answer some of the bigger questions.

Difficult but Worthwhile.......2006-08-19

A labyrinth of detail, Bodansky's book is a tour of all the rivalries that constitute the complex middle-eastern jigsaw. Yes, it is a complicated read, so if you are looking for a simple analysis like the one the White House relies on, you will be disappointed. "Oh," the critics are saying, "Bodansky's assertions are unsupported." Funny how in July of 2006 CBS news reported the Russians playing both sides and feeding battlefield intelligence to the Iraqis, something Yossef Bodansky's "unsupported" work reported two years earlier! It's a convoluted work, but there is nothing in the middle east that isn't convoluted.

The author, Yossef Bodansky, isn't some conspiracy wonk, he has been the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for more than a decade. He is the director of research at the International Strategic Studies Association, and senior editor for the Defense and Foreign Affairs group of publications: and the list just goes on. It is Bodansky's naysayers who are unsubstantiated. "The Secret History of the Iraq War" is a complete deconstruction of US policy in Iraq, the invasion, and its aftermath. It is a study in the larger Islamic picture that deserves to be heard above the din of Bush apologists.

Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?

Average customer rating:

Commandments for common man
A "monumental confidence trick"
Good account of an unnecessary, diversionary war
Bloody Brilliant!
The best book on the topic

Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?
Dilip Hiro
Manufacturer: Nation Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

Iran | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

Iraq | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1560255560

Book Description

The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, masterminded by U.S. President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is the single most important event since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Just as that break-up ushered in a new era in international relations following the end of a bipolar world system, this war has given a new twist to the present global order. Secrets and Lies tells in detail how Operation Iraqi Freedom came about, what it means and where it is likely to lead the Middle East and the world at large. It reveals the scope of the “dirty tricks” used by the Anglo-American alliance to sell the war through the phony intelligence reports and the exaggeration of Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. It examines the media campaign to win hearts and minds—including the stage management and spin surrounding the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch. Picking up from the author's recently celebrated essay in the New York Times, “Why the Mullahs Love a Revolution,” this leading authority on the Middle East provides us with his skeptical view of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and his examination of the future in Middle East.

Customer Reviews:

Commandments for common man.......2006-06-01

Dilip Hiro has revealed a set of commandments for common man, pitted against those of God's gift to Bush.Those few of of us, who advised all of us on why we should side with the Superpower and join the coalition militarily must be eating their words, with their so called shallow pride too. An unjust war by Iraq on Kuwait was as unjustified as this Anglo-American invasion on Iraq. The poster boy of the coalition war, Gen Tommy Franks, CENTCOM has labored enough on Iraq operation in his memoirs (American Soldier) and has lauded his President and the triumvirate of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell against uncooperative Pentagon and CIA with its hard nosed chief, George Tenet. However the background to decision on Iraq war eluded him too as he was already outstretched in Afghan war and wanted a desperate time period for build up to take on Iraq as well. That he carried out the conventional operation splendidly goes to his credit but the failure to hold on to early gains in a long drawn out war of terror by Iraqi resistance, buttresses the thesis of Dilip Hiro as he quotes Bush in his dyslexic stupor, "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did". God beware lest he tells Bush to look ominously at Iran (as he already is staring!). Who's next?? Ask God or wait for Bush to reveal new Commandments. So much, for World peace, by an "Inspired Leader". Thank you Hiro for enlightening us, you are the Hero of common man. And your book is our Commandment.

A "monumental confidence trick".......2005-08-03

Middle East expert Dilip Hiro chronicles the runup and impact of the Bush crusade to "liberate" Iraq. He typifies the link the Bush adminstration made between the events of 2001-09-11 as a "phantom". There was no association between the Saddam Hussein government and the lawless attackers known as Al Qaida. Nor were there indications that Iraq clandestinely developed nuclear or chemical weapons that could be brought to bear on neighbouring countries, let alone Britain or the US. In sum, Hiro's depiction of the formation of the "coalition of the willing" is shown as a tissue of misleading information based on a strategy of fear - a "monumental confidence trick" with endless ramifications.

Hiro assembles a cast of flawed characters, giving a biographical sketch of such people as George Walker Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Anthony Blair. From this background, he then describes the various utterances each has produced to justify the crusade. From the beginning, he makes clear that the Iraq invasion would take place. All that was needed was justification. This was provided by various forms of "evidence", all of which was either false or flawed. Tubing for "nuclear centrifuges" turned out to be engine cases. A quest for uranium proved false. And nuclear and chemical weapons claimed by the Bush administration proved elusive - they have yet to be found. With such faulty information at his disposal, even after some of the lies were exposed, Bush gained authority to launch the crusade from a supine US Congress. The US media, once considered a bastion of investigative journalism, remained silent or compliant as the fallacies were revealed.

From the preparations for invasion, which included a eight-month illegal air assault on a sovereign nation, code-named "Southern Focus", Hiro moves on to the actual conflict. The lies and deceptions didn't end with the launching of Tomahawk missiles. In battles where the invaders were to have destroyed only military resistance, the "coalition" dropped updated napalm and used "cluster" weapons. The impact of these devices on the civilian population remains to be assessed, but by the fall of the Hussein government, more than three times the number of civilians killed by the attack on the World Trade Centre had been inflicted. And that's the conservative estimate. Hiro tracks the journal of one young Baghdad woman as the barrage of bombs and missiles rains down on the city. The Bush administration's contention that the Iraqi population would welcome the Yanks with "flowers and cheers" proved as flawed as his reasons for the invasion.

Bush didn't launch a pre-emptive war, but a preventive one. A pre-emptive war is an action to curtail a visible threat. No such threat, especially against the US, existed in Iraq. Bush's imperialist declaration of 2002, which stipulated the US had abrogated unto itself the sole privilege of determining what threatened that nation, obliterated the distinction between pre-emptive and preventive, writes Hiro. This action overturned a precedent set in 1648 in the Treaty of Westphalia, a model for all international relations ever since. Bush also sought to overturn any cooperative mechanisms in his unilateral actions. His method to garner small nations into joining the "coalition of the willing" was by browbeating them with threats of withholding future aid. The populations of even those nations joining the crusade were overwhelmingly opposed to involvement and said so in massive demonstrations, Hiro notes.

In his Summary and Conclusion, Hiro notes the resentment evidenced by Iraqis to the invasion. Even those gleeful at the toppling of Saddam Hussein have no desire for retention of foreign occupiers. The vaunted technology that guided missiles to government facilities has yet to ensure water or electrical supplies to the population of Baghdad and other cities. The mantra of "remnants of the old regime" leading the resistance to the invaders has been repeatedly refuted, Hiro demonstrates. Bremer's "Interim Governing Council" even lacked a ministry for religious affairs - in a nation rent by sectarian differences. The occupying forces, especially those of the US, lacked fundamental understanding of the Arab culture present in Iraq. With much of that culture evident in the Middle East and transported to other Muslim nations, is there any mystery in why resentment against Bush's unilateral adventurism remains in force?

The core of Bush's policies toward Iraq were false and/or misleading, according to Hiro. After reading his summation of declarations and events, it's impossible to refute his thesis. His deceptive administration has demonstrated a mastery of "spin", perhaps only exceeded by that of his flunky, Tony Blair. Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Projects", set well apart from the established departments for intelligence, provided the grounds for invasion. Their information is shown to be either unreliable or long outdated. Yet this was the basis for conning the US Congress into accepting Bush's request for war. Hiro goes on to note how the Bush government edited reports on environmental and health questions in order to sustain his policies. Real information has been shelved, ignored or rebutted to quell dissenters. In sum, it's clear that this book is a mandatory read for all in the USA. Read it for its wealth of information and clarity of presentation. It's a rewarding and insightful summary of adminstration with a tenuous hold on truth. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Good account of an unnecessary, diversionary war.......2004-12-02

Historian and journalist Dilip Hiro has written a detailed account of the continuing Bush/Blair attack on Iraq. He examines the preparations for the invasion, the attack itself and the continuing war since Bush declared victory in May 2003. Hiro shows how the attack on Iraq has diverted us from defeating Al Qa'ida, and how it has increased the terrorist threat.

He details the Bush and Blair governments' systematic lies to the UN, to Parliament and Congress, to the British and American peoples, and to the Hutton and other inquiries. Almost everything that we are told about the war comes from `embedded' reporters, who are required by contract to agree to obey Bush's instructions.

The occupation is causing chaos - 60% unemployment, worsening health and education, an estimated 100,000 killed, shortages of water, fuel and electricity, and minimal rebuilding. The occupying forces are not seeking, and will never achieve, a friendly, stable or democratic Iraq.

The US and British forces are using cluster bombs, heavy artillery and napalm, real weapons of mass destruction, just like in Vietnam. So, as in Vietnam, they are losing hearts and minds, and losing the war.

The January election will not improve security or `change the atmosphere', as Blair claims. Their aim is not election but dereliction. In years to come, if we let it happen, they will sigh, `to save Iraq we had to destroy it'.

Not surprisingly, the occupation is generating popular hatred of the occupier, fuelling the national resistance. The vast majority of the Iraqi people want the occupying forces out as soon as possible, as do the majority of the British and American peoples.

But Blair says that the troops will stay to oversee the 30 January election, then that they will stay till December 2005. The US commanders say that they will leave in 2006, if the security situation allows. Chief of the General Staff Sir Michael Walker says that British troops will stay indefinitely, `depending on the security threat to the Iraqi authorities'. But we can all see that the occupation itself causes the insecurity and chaos.

Bloody Brilliant!.......2004-06-19

The Administration revealed for its deceitful ways. It is a delightful read, informative as well as sheerly entertaining for the power of its revelations. Read only if you are willing to look at the truth and consider its validity, not if you plan to regain your composure by looking at your Bush-draped-in-an-American-flag poster.

The best book on the topic.......2004-05-01

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know why the US military invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Dilip Hiro has compiled a very detailed history of the lead-up to the invasion, the first four weeks, and the aftermath.

He starts with the post-9/11 White House, where the neoconservative Bush administration shifted their focus from fighting terrorism (and fundamentalism in south central Asia and the Middle East) to Iraq. The neocons were dedicated to removing Saddam Hussein, but no one else was. They had to convince Colin Powell, the US population, and the rest of the world. Dilip Hiro shows how the upcoming invasion was marketed using carefully-selected intelligence reports, creating a false crisis. From the yellowcake from Africa to the lies about ongoing inspections by the UN, Dilip Hiro documents it all.

But the invasion takes place anyway. He shifts his focus to the war, using detailed maps and newspaper sources to describe the battles, the setbacks, and the strategies the US military used. He covers the first month of the invasion, ending with the occupation and Bush claiming 'mission accomplished.'

This is a devastating critique of a US foreign policy completely divorced from democracy and world opinion. Every fact in this book, stacked up in page after page, creates a chilling picture of the wrong war for the wrong reasons. If you are only going to read one book on the invasion (and occupation) of Iraq, make it this one. You'll end up referring to it over and over in the next few years, reminding yourself of how we got into this mess.

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Concise & informative

If you hate your country....

The Downing Street Memo

Creating Imperial Reality

Okay...a short book on the memo

The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History
Mark Danner
Manufacturer: New York Review Books
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Binding: Paperback

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Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11

Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror

Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War

The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina

ASIN: 1590172078
Release Date: 2006-04-04

Book Description

The United States went to war in Iraq to eliminate the threat from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction—which turned out not to exist. As the war drags on, the strange case of the weapons that were not there remains a matter of bitter debate, for it underscores the fact that the goals and the motivations of the Bush administration officials who argued for war are still largely obscure. Yet in fact there exists crucial and little-publicized evidence that lets us understand the secretive, even deceptive, way that the the US launched a war of choice in the Middle East in March 2003.

At the beginning of May 2005, just before the British elections, the London Times published the "Downing Street Memo," the leaked secret minutes of a July 2002 meeting of senior British intelligence, foreign policy, and security officials. The memo made clear that eight months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush had already decided on war. The British officials who attended the meeting were told that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," that the US wanted to avoid consulting the UN, and that few plans were being made for the aftermath of war.

Largely ignored in the US press for weeks afterward, The New York Review of Books published the memo in its entirety with an extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Mark Danner. Danner explains how the memo clarifies the broader—and largely concealed—history of the events leading up to the Iraq war. He shows that the Bush and Blair administrations advocated the resumption of UN weapons inspections as a means not to avoid war but to ensure it. Most importantly, Danner argues that in the face of the memo's clear evidence of deception, the press, public, and Congress still have not held the administration responsible.

The Secret Way to War, with a preface by by Frank Rich, includes Mark Danner's strongly argued analysis of the Downing Street Memo as well as the complete text of the memo and seven other leaked British documents. Collectively, the documents show the members of Tony Blair's government and their counterparts in Washington struggling to find legal and political rationales and strategies for regime change in Iraq.

Customer Reviews:

Concise & informative.......2007-06-06

This is a good book to read for information on the Downing Street memo--there was not enough press coverage on this, so I am glad this book was published.

If you hate your country...........2007-06-02

if you believe the worst about America, if you love believing everything critical about our nation, then Danner is the author of choice. Otherwise: Avoid this book.

The Downing Street Memo.......2006-11-07

Mr. Danner's pamphlet was easy to read, concise and informative on a subject about which all Americans should be better informed.

Creating Imperial Reality.......2006-10-04

In its June 9, 2005, issue The New York Review of Books published an article entitled "The Secret Way to War" in which Mark Danner reviewed and interpreted the recently released secret memo summarizing the main points of a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, cabinet members, and senior government officials held at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002. The book reprints this article as well as critical letters by Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott and Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Kinsley with the author's response to each. The author adds an afterword and an appendix containing the full text of the Downing Street Memo and seven other British documents pertaining to it.

Danner makes three main points. First, it is clear that the Bush administration had decided to go to war with Iraq eight months before the actual March 19, 2003, attack. Second, from that point the Bush administration set out to "fix" the intelligence to build the strongest argument for war. Third, the Bush administration manipulated the weapons inspections to find a pretext for war even when claiming to use them as a way to avoid war.

Danner distinguishes between the possible reasons the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq ("to remove the threat a hostile and unpredictable dictator was thought to pose . . . to the industrial world's oil supply; to foreclose the possibility of any collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda . . .; to do away with a regime hostile to Israel; [and/or] to begin a process of limited `democratization' in the countries of the Middle East") from the pretexts for going to war (self-defense, humanitarian intervention, or violation of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Iraq cease its programs involving atomic, biological, and chemical weapons.)

Since Iraq clearly was not a threat to the United States and since this was not a case of humanitarian intervention, the US, with British cooperation, based its case on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The two governments hoped that Saddam Hussein would resist inspections giving the Security Council grounds for authorizing military intervention. When Hussein surprised them by letting the inspectors in, and when the inspectors found nothing, the United States went to war before the inspectors could finish their job.

Most disturbing is Danner's comparison of Joseph Goebels to an unnamed senior advisor to President Bush. Goebels claimed there was no point in trying to convert intellectuals because they would always yield to "the man in the street." "Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."

Speaking to a New York Times Magazine Reporter, the Bush advisor contrasted "the reality-based community" (people who believe that solutions emerge from the judicious study of discernable reality) with the way things work now. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. . .We're history's actors...and you [reality-based reporters]...will be left to just study what we do."

Danner concludes: "We live with the legacy of exaggerations and lies of the secret way to war: in the distortion of the public debate, the corruption of our politics, and the collapse of the one element essential to fighting a long and inconclusive conflict--the trust and support of the people."

Okay...a short book on the memo.......2006-07-11

This was good but I would not necessarily recommend everyone read it. You can read this in one night.

The WMD Mirage: Iraq's Decade of Deception and America's False Premise for War (Publicaffairs Reports)

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The Definitive Report
nothing but centrist propaganda!

The WMD Mirage: Iraq's Decade of Deception and America's False Premise for War (Publicaffairs Reports)

Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1586483617

Book Description

Features the soon-to-be-released official report from the bipartisan Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction-named by President Bush to try to prevent similar policy debacles in Iran and North Korea.

It also includes the official speeches, United Nations reports, and declassified government investigation reports that show, step by step, how the United States got the crucial question of arms in Iraq so terribly wrong.

The documents show that:

The CIA concluded in 2002 that Iraq had reconstituted its WMD programs, but in fact Saddam had dismantled them.

American policymakers consistently assumed the worst case: regardless of his denials, if there was intelligence that Saddam might be making weapons of mass destruction then he had them and was hiding them. UN inspectors, by contrast, assumed that thorough inspection and insistence on complete Iraqi documentation could determine what the truth was

UN inspectors were frustrated by Saddam's refusal to cooperate freely and thwarted by American military impatience just as they thought themselves on the verge of success.

American inspectors sent in after the war in 2003 found no weapons of mass destruction and how they-and Washington insiders-began to question the basis of the prewar intelligence.

New York Times editor and contributor to The 9/11 Investigations (PublicAffairs; 2004) Craig R. Whitney has scoured the documents surrounding the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In The WMD Mirage, he has assembled the most revelatory and pertinent of these. The result is a startling narrative trail that leads readers through the intelligence and misinformation leading into Iraq-and a telling portrait of how the Bush administration, whether deliberately or unintentionally, with scant evidence and largely against the will of the international community, convinced the American people and their few allies of the urgent need for war.

A must-read for scholars, voters, and anyone interested in the goings-on in Iraq, the growing threats perceived elsewhere, and the truth behind our frayed international reputation, The WMD Mirage offers the real story of the missing weapons of mass destruction. In offering such a clear-eyed and documented picture of how we got it wrong in Iraq, The WMD Mirage is the first book that also includes the new conclusions of the Presidential Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.

Customer Reviews:

The Definitive Report.......2005-05-14

Americans absolutely love conspiracy theories. It seems that it is much easy to believe in a conspiracy with 'they' being out to get you than to simply say that a bunch of people screwed up. And now it seems that we've finally found one to, hopefully, replace the conspiracy that killed Kennedy and perhaps even the one about the UFO's at Roswell.

The truth appears to be bad enough. The intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Australia, Israel, Germany, France and Russia all got it wrong. (Yes, France and Russia believed in the WMD's as well but didn't want an invasion because they were getting preferential oil pricing from Iraq to trade for weapons.)

The real problem here is that if we believe in a conspiracy, then we won't feel it necessary to take the steps to fix the real problem.

This book has been dismissed as centrist propaganda by one reviewer. I don't know what that is, left wing I know, right wing I know. Centrist to me says that the writer is trying to be unbiased - and that's what I really want to read. It seems to me that the book is pretty fairly balanced. My only real complaint is that it doesn't have an index, and with its format, it is sometimes difficult to go back and see where it said something.

For another report, the article in the Atlantic in the January/February 2004 by Kenneth M. Pollack titled Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong is highly recommended - It's available on line at no charge.

nothing but centrist propaganda!.......2005-04-24

This compilation of documents, edited by a New York Times reporter, is nothing but centrist propaganda. It focuses on "failures" of the CIA and intelligence-gathering, but includes NOTHING on the Office of Special Plans, the Lie Factory in the Pentagon that deliberately spun intel to support the neoconservative agenda of war-on-Iraq-no-matter-what and reported directly to Cheney. The excellent Mother Jones article called "The Lie Factory" has yet to be expanded into a book as far as I know, but look for it on the Mother Jones website. The best book on the subject is Bamford's A PRETEXT FOR WAR (see my review). The Carnegie Endowment for Peace was a source of excellent information debunking the Bush Administration's case for war long before the war was launched. The idea that "everyone thought the threat was real" until the post-war discovery of no weapons is nonsense, nothing but post-hoc propaganda which serves to justify the war.

See HOODWINKED by John Prados for a much better analysis of the "WMD" issue, with full documentation (see my review). The very category WMD is a propaganda device which lumps nuclear weapons in with the much less dangerous chemical and biological weapons, thus magnifying the threat from the latter. The mass media acceptance of the term WMD is one of the biggest victories of the neoconservatives.

There was a Senate committee report on the WMD intel that came out in the summer of 2004. It was eclipsed in the media by the 9/11 report. But that Senate committee report was supposed to have a follow-on, a Part 2, that examined the deliberate distortion of intel by the Bush Administration -- no surprise, the GOP-run Senate has never issued that report.

See my NEOCON LIES & WARS FOR OIL list for more.

The "intel incompetence" line is very convenient for Bush and Cheney -- it absolves them of responsibility for an unnecessary war. But it is far from a secret that they were itching for "regime change" in Iraq from the day they occupied the levers of power. Was the Pentagon Office of Special Plans a hallucination, or did Feith report to Cheney with intel cooked to support an invasion? Just look at Powell's pitiful presentation to the U.N. -- that's all they had? Obviously a decision had been made and the lack of evidence be damned. This is not an exotic conspiracy theory, and it's not "having it both ways." The CIA was not calling the shots -- the CIA incompetence from the P.O.V. of Rumsfeld, Cheney & Bush was not that they exaggerated the threat, but rather that they couldn't produce convincing evidence that a threat existed to support the plan for war. This has been in plain sight all along, and it is a blatant after-the-fact coverup to bury the truth in a blizzard of misleading official reports.

If you don't believe me, and you're inclined to think this is a "stupid conspiracy theory" as our helpful intel insider Maskirovka would have it, check out the books by Bamford and Prados, check out the Mother Jones article, and check out the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- look for the article "Origins of Regime Change in Iraq" by Joseph Cirincione, Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at CEIP, which traces the neocons' unceasing efforts between 1991 and 2003.

Saddam's Bombmaker: The Daring Escape of the Man Who Built Iraq's Secret Weapon

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Book Has Problems But Is An Important Contribution
A small point of clarification....
Recommended
A well-written memoir...
Eye-opening and informative book. Easy to smuggle past the UN

Saddam's Bombmaker: The Daring Escape of the Man Who Built Iraq's Secret Weapon
Khidhir Hamza , and Jeff Stein
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0743211359
Release Date: 2001-10-30

Amazon.com

"I am lucky to be alive," writes Khidhir Hamza on the opening page of this memoir, which reads like a thriller. Hamza describes how he helped Saddam Hussein design a nuclear bomb over the course of 22 years. He has an amazing story to relate, and with the help of collaborator Jeff Stein, he tells it remarkably well. It begins with his cloak-and-dagger escape from Baghdad in 1994, then goes back in time to describe the education he received earlier in the United States. Hamza returned to his native Iraq, and Saddam seduced him into accepting the comfortable life of an atomic scientist trying to build a bomb for a megalomaniac. Hamza presents a terrifying, almost psychotic portrait of Hussein himself: the dictator--a man with "yellow, lifeless eyes"--has a paranoid fear of germs and a taste for Johnnie Walker Blue Label. He's prone to drunken rages and relies on sedatives to keep control of himself: "His personality grew more erratic with the ups and downs of the drugs, the liquor, and the pressures of command." Hamza recounts a story told by one of Saddam's doctors, in which the strongman was found "stomping about his palace bedroom in a blood-splotched shirt" near the body of a woman whose throat was slit.

Hamza was eventually kept under house arrest, and even threatened with torture. His escape was an astonishing feat, and the message he brought to the West is vital: "I have no doubt that Iraq is pursuing the nuclear option." The Gulf War slowed development, but failed to shut it down. The coalition that knocked Saddam out of Kuwait has fallen apart, and United Nations inspectors no longer try to keep him in check. Hamza urges policymakers to confront Saddam, and suggests that the CIA redouble its efforts to help topnotch scientists flee from their virtual captivity. If rogue nations experience a brain drain, he says, their capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction will suffer. Saddam's Bombmaker is hard to put down and essential reading for anybody interested in national security. --John J. Miller

Book Description

"DON'T TELL ME ABOUT THE LAW. THE LAW IS ANYTHING I WRITE ON A SCRAP OF PAPER." -- SADDAM HUSSEIN

In a white-knuckle thriller, Khidhir Hamza, who spent twenty years developing Iraq's atomic weapon, recounts his life in Saddam Hussein's inner circle and his daring flight to the West.

Taking readers into the darkest corners of a regime ruled by a volatile, brutal leader, Dr. Hamza, the only defector who has lived to write a firsthand portrait of Iraq, also presents an unprecedented portrait of Saddam -- his drunken rages, his women, his cold-blooded murder of underlings, and his unrivaled power. If pushed to the wall, Saddam will use the bomb that Dr. Hamza helped create.

From the relentless dangers Dr. Hamza endured in Iraq to his harrowing flight across three continents and his first encounter with skeptical CIA agents who turned him away, Saddam's Bombmaker is a true-to-life thriller as rich in danger, intrigue, and personal courage as a well-crafted spy novel.

Download Description

The defector once responsible for Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program reveals for the first time what the CIA and Iraq desperately want to keep hidden -- that Saddam Hussein is devastatingly close to manufacturing nuclear weapons and has every intention of using them.

Customer Reviews:

Book Has Problems But Is An Important Contribution.......2006-10-22

Saddam's Bombmaker is an important contribution to our understanding of the challenges faced by groups and states trying to produce their own nuclear weapon.
How Iraq and Hamza went about trying to obtain fissile materiel and advanced tools and parts is the most interesting and important part of the book. You will be alternatively pleased at how hard it is to obtain some items (like plutonium) and dismayed at how easy it is to obtain others from willing states and companies. The book should be read by those interested in obtaining a better understanding of nuclear proliferation.
Now to the shortcomings of the book---
(1) the chronology is hard to follow, the author doesn't reference a lot of dates and flips back and forth between present, past and future.
(2) It's hard to not to become skeptical of Dr. Hamza's motives at certain points. He claims to have been forced and terrorized to work on Saddam's bomb, but was simultaneously enjoying all the comforts and benefits that Saddam's regime had to offer like new cars, high living and perks. One wonders whether Dr. Hamza's conscience really caught up with him as he claims, or did he just read the writing on the wall that there was no future in Saddam's Iraq?

A small point of clarification...........2006-10-17

Convinced he had discovered that Iraq was only ` a few inches' away from finishing a successful production of the `Bomb', the author suddenly summoned undocumented story about 1) his contribution to the `bomb's project' from initial stages, and another 2) by alluding to IBM not able to sell Iraq up to date technology.
On page 141 he refers to IBM "couldn't sell us their new mainframe because of the export controls."
The truth of the matter is that the Arab Boycott Office had narrated a statement, called the `negative' (or Nasty) clause, to the effect that `carriers and ships carrying goods destined to and/or from the Arab Countries, should NOT pass through or deal with Israeli ports".
The Boycott Clause (stereotyped as is) was to be mentioned on the Bills of Lading and on all related shipping documents.
IBM had to comply with the USA anti Boycott regulations that did not accept such `negative' statements.

Recommended.......2006-07-22

I read this as a book on tape. This is an "important" book. I recommend it highly. Email:boland7214@aol.

A well-written memoir..........2005-10-28

Most physicists lead hum-drum lives, but not if they were born in Iraq. Hamza studied in American graduate schools, and was summoned back to teach in Iraq as a way of paying off his university debts. When invited in 1972 to join the nascent Iraqi nuclear effort, Hamza did so with some enthusiasm, thinking this would be a wonderful professional challenge and not taking seriously the prospect of an actual bomb. In addition to Hamza's talent as a scientist and scholar, his finely-tuned ability to stay out of trouble quickly became apparent and he began a long march through the bureaucracy. By 1981, he was working directly for Saddam Husayn and by 1987 he served as director general of the Nuclear Weapon Program. This high stature inevitably brought the scientist head-turning benefits - a high salary, travel to the West, fancy cars, even a residence located within Saddam Husayn's presidential compound. "All that loot was softening me up, I don't deny it," Hamza admits. With time, however, an absorbing intellectual venture turned into a descent into Stalinist hell. Finally, Hamza fully woke to his situation ("I had sold out for a Mercedes") and in 1994 managed to escape from Iraq, settling a year later in the United States.

Although Saddam's Bombmaker is a well-written memoir (kudos to co-author Stein), it contains important information on two quite distinct topics of current interest: life at the highest levels of Iraqi regime and the inner workings of the Iraqi nuclear weapons project. It is hard to say which is scarier. Life in Saddam's court is morbidly fascinating. We learn about his paranoia about germs, his taste for virgins, and his personal penchant for brutality. As for the nukes, Hamza shows how, after an initial period (1972-81) of heavy dependence on imported technology, the Iraqis rethought their program, put twenty-five times more resources in it, and built "a crude, one-and-a-half ton nuclear device" by 1990.

Eye-opening and informative book. Easy to smuggle past the UN.......2005-07-15

This is an excellent book and eye-opener based on the first hand account of the scientist that worked on Saddam's nuclear bomb program. It is very insightful on Saddam's personality in how he rules through fear, punishes and then rewards to try to regain loyalty.

The most eye-opening is how the Iraq government circumvented the UN embargo after the 1990 Gulf War. It is also disappointing on reading how ineffective the UN inspection program was and how Saddam was able to hide his developmental programs.

The author first starts his story attempting to escape Iraq alone, in the hopes of later being able to find a way to save his family from Saddam's regime. The author later describes the major events that occurred and provides his view on what happened and how the lives of not only the scientists, but also those of the average Iraq citizen were affected.

An outstanding book that was published in 2000 and was worth every penny spent buying it, and every second spent reading it.

Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War

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Reviews of Unholy Babylon (1 full review and 2 partial reviews)
Inside the Mesopotamian Frankenstein Created by the US

Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War
Adel Darwish , and Gregory Alexander
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Kuwait | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

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Reviews of Unholy Babylon (1 full review and 2 partial reviews).......2005-08-15

The Toronto Star
May 4, 1991, Saturday

A saga of tawdry double dealing
By Paul William Roberts

Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War

By Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander

....

ANYONE PUZZLED by President George Bush's hypocritical actions during the period immediately following his order reining in Desert Storm's dogs of war will be terminally confounded by Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander's meticulously- researched saga of the tawdry double-dealing strewn along the road leading to this confrontation with Saddam Hussein.

Back when he was CIA director, Bush was personally responsible for the mass slaughter of Kurds by the Baghdad regime, having urged them to revolt, armed them, then failed to provide any backup. Now, as President, he's betrayed them again, and in much the same way, standing in the ditch he calls high moral ground while Iraqi helicopter-gunships and troops butcher countless thousands of men, women and children. If this is "an Iraqi internal affair" in Washington's eyes, then so was the Nazi holocaust. With 200,000 or so troops still within Iraqi borders, Bush apparently sees nothing wrong with upholding Saddam's sovereign right to slaughter any religious or ethnic faction he feels inclined to. Why?

Unholy Babylon provides answers to this and numerous other tricky questions, raising still trickier questions in the process. Darwish is one of the most respected and authoritative investigative reporters covering Middle East affairs. Egyptian by birth, he currently corresponds for The Independent, which consistently provided critical commentary of the war while most Western media waved the Stars and Stripes like hapless vassals. His co-author, "Gregory Alexander," is regarded by those who are aware of his actual identity as one of the two or three supreme experts on international arms trading. He employs a pseudonym and lives in conditions that make Salman Rushdie's arrangements seem positively freewheeling. I'm betraying no confidence by saying he was once a British army officer serving in the Middle East, and then actually worked in the international arms industry for several years before conscience called.

Although people like Judith Miller (Saddam Hussein And The Crisis In The Gulf) and Samir al-Khalil (Republic Of Fear) have done yeoman's work covering similar territory, Darwish and Alexander, besides having access to stratospherically high-level source material, manage a level of concision and readability that makes coherent sense of close to a century's worth of history, much of it deliberately obfuscated, partially erased, or hopelessly tangled to protect the guilty. Who the guilty actually are is Unholy Babylon's main theme.

The book confirms that Iraq's plot to annex Kuwait was made known to most Arab leaders by February, 1990. Both the CIA and the Egyptian intelligence service warned their respective governments repeatedly, stating unequivocally by late September that Saddam's troops would definitely be moving across the border within days. Presidents Bush and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak chose to ignore these warnings. Why?

Reading this chilling and repulsive tale of big politics and even bigger business, you find yourself yodelling why? every 10 minutes. Why, for example, didn't we see much evidence of the $ 50 billion or so in high-tech arms sold by the U.S. to Saudi Arabia over the last few years? Why was America aligning itself with countries that had human rights records at least as bad as those of Saddam's Ba'athist regime they were conscripted to topple? And why did Bush encourage Iraqi Kurds and Shiites to embark on a civil war if he had no intention of supporting them - particularly since he'd stopped Stormin' Norman from trashing Saddam's war machine when the opportunity was available, and thus knew full well the rebels did not stand a chance against the kind of punch Baghdad could still deploy against them?

The truth is - as Unholy Babylon makes abundantly clear - that Washington prefers Saddam, the monster it made, and a Ba'athist reign of terror in Iraq to the prospect of a Kurdistan which could end up controlling the world's second largest oilfields, and a Shiite state in southern Iraq that would inevitably find itself a satellite of fundamentalist Iran. America's fear of Iran, the authors reveal, is indeed so great it must be considered the major factor in the decade-long cultivation of Saddam Hussein's regime - a cultivation that paralleled the lavish U.S. cossetting of the Shah's Iran, entailing techno-military assistance of the first order, including hands-on involvement by numerous American allies in the construction of weapons facilities more advanced than any outside North America or NATO. They became Desert Storm's first targets.

Besides naked greed and the mega-politics of oil, the only thing approaching reasons and answers this book offers is the suggestion that U.S. foreign policy has more to do with chaos and instability than it does with putting order in the "new world order." As long as the U.S. is creating the chaos, it can operate within it quite happily and much more easily than it could within, say, a truly democratic Middle East.

Darwish and Alexander make no comment on the diabolical facts they began assembling even before August 2, 1990 but I'd like to meet the reader who does not finish Unholy Babylon with a sizzling sense of rage, despair and abject frustration aimed at those we have allowed to govern the allegedly-free world and who have abused that privilege by licensing a wrecking-crew to exploit and enslave the wretched of the Earth.

---
Toronto Star Newspapers
July 6, 1991 Saturday

Authors examine the effects of international greed

Unholy Babylon presents a detailed account of the world's financing of Iraq's military machine and the history of events that led to the invasion of Kuwait and the diplomatic posturing prior to the Persian Gulf War.

Authors Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander display a sophisticated knowledge of Arab politics and history and the ruthless practices of the international arms trade. They combine extensive research with broad contacts and experience, giving Unholy Babylon an authority and depth that is both fascinating and chilling.

Darwish and Alexander contend that world leaders ignored warning signals, bungled messages and recklessly pursued their own short-sighted goals in the years and months that led up to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Again and again, they missed opportunities to curb Saddam Hussein's belligerence, even as Iraqi tanks rolled south towards Kuwait.

Furthermore, leaders of the East and West share the blame for helping create Saddam Hussein's mighty war machine.

Generous loans and financing from foreign governments and banks allowed Iraq to spend between $80 and $105 billion on armaments from 1980-90. During the mid 1980s, Iraq became the world's leading importer of arms. Even after the end of its war with Iran, Iraq continued to pump billions of dollars a year into weapons of mass destruction.

A few diplomats and intelligence officials raised murmurs of alarm, but these invariably were side-stepped by businesses and ministries of trade and commerce who were anxious to sell military wares to virtually any nation willing to buy. Effective embargoes were few.

The effects of international greed were compounded by anxious government and military leaders who were willing to do almost anything to stop the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Better Saddam Hussein than the Ayatollah Khomeini, they reasoned. Saddam was pleased to take all the armaments they could offer.

Unholy Babylon makes clear that despite official government policy, most nations are prepared to turn a blind eye when arms sales boost local employment and stimulate the GNP.

As U.S. President George Bush trumpets a new policy of international arms control without controlling arms, the world seems to have learned little. Saddam Hussein is bloodied but unbowed. Billions of dollars worth of armaments continue to flow to the Middle East.
--
Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)

December 4, 1991 Wednesday

...Readers bemused by the peaceniks' vitriolic attacks upon the Americans for the victory over Iraq will find Unholy Babylon most enlightening.

Written by two respected experts on the Middle East, Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, the book is sub-titled 'The Secret History of Saddam's War' and reveals much background material not generally known in North America, including Western bungling which allowed Saddam to invade Kuwait with impunity.

Meaty and detailed, yet readily understandable, the book will repay study by anyone wanting more than he finds in the media to understand the Gulf War.

--

The Nation
March 29, 2004

... Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander in their 1991 book, Unholy Babylon, [reported] that Washington was extremely alarmed by Qassim and the Communists, and therefore wooed the Baath Party as an alternative. When the Baath briefly came to power in 1963, the CIA passed to Saddam Hussein, probably an agency asset, a list of hundreds of Iraqi Communists, whom the new regime liquidated. The Baath was in the wilderness when the coup collapsed, but came back to stay in 1968. Again, Darwish and Alexander report assertions of US backing for the 1968 coup, confirmed to me by other journalists who have talked to retired CIA and State Department officials.

Inside the Mesopotamian Frankenstein Created by the US.......2002-03-21

Unholy Babylon is the detailed chronicle of the creation of a monster - Saddam Hussein - aided and abetted by the United States and other western powers. The US needed Saddam, in their estimation, to counter the Iranian threat. The US and European countries were willing to tolerate and to support internal totalitarianism and terror, suppression of dissent by force, gas warfare and other war crimes against internal enemies and Iran, as long as Saddam would fight the Iranian menace. The British looked the other way as Saddam murdered dissenters on their soil. Everyone looked away as virtually every country in Europe, plus the US and Canada, lined up to supply Saddam Hussein with long range rockets and essential atomic bomb technology.
Adel Darwish is eminently qualified for the job of investigating Saddam's empire, having been a veteran foreign correspondent in Iraq before he was thrown out for reporting a major missile testing mis-hap and thus revealing Saddam's secret missile development program.
The hard cover edition of Unholy Babylon has been updated and corrected and is probably well worth the extra investment.
Read this book to understand what is happening now. It has been the source book (sometimes not acknowledged) for several "informed analyses."...

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