ADDITIONAL POSSIBLE READINGS:

"Bush and God," Newsweek (March 10, 2003), by Howard Fineman.  A very provocative and powerful piece about the profound impact on September 11 on Bush, the role of religion, and becoming a type of born again "war president."

"Cheney's Long Path to War," Newsweek (November 17, 2003), by Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas.  Investigative journalism on Cheney's  behind the scenes but critical role to war.

 

"U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup:  Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds," Washington Post (December 30, 2002), by Michael Dobbs.  A brief history of America's role in supporting Saddam Hussein and Iraq before the first gulf war.

 

 "Over 100,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom," Asheville Global News (November 4-10, 2004), compiled by Patrick Byrne.  Sources: Al-jazeera, AP, BBC, Independent(UK), New York Times, and Reuters.  Interesting and controversial study.  But even if the numbers are half-correct, . . .

"Global Security Firms Fill in as Private Armies: 15,000 agents Patrol Violent Streets of Iraq," San Francisco Chronocle (March 28, 2004), by Robert Collier.  Describes the rise of PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS being used in Iraq and throughout the world, an important phenomena in U.S. foreign policy and global politics.

"THE GRAY ZONE: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib," by SEYMOUR M. HERSH The New Yorker  (May 24, 2004).  Beginning paragraph:  "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror."

 

"The Vanishing Case for War," New York Review of Books (December 4, 2003), by Thomas Powers.  One of the most prominent and respected experts on intelligence makes it clear that the case for war with Iraq was based on politicized and selective intelligence at the highest levels of government.  As Powers states, "The invasion and conquest of Iraq by the United States last spring was the result of what is probably the least ambiguous case of the misreading of secret intelligence in American history."  Powers explains what happened and why.

 

"Blind Into Baghdad:The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge.  The inside story of a historic failure.. The Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2004) by James Fallows.    More insightful, informative,  eye-opening, illustrative and devastating than the first or second Woodward books, the Clarke book, the Oneil Book or any other book or article that I am aware of (in my humble opinion). From one of the truly top American journalists, comes a fabulous and disturbing article, presented in Fallows' typically well-written and professional way.  Fallows demonstrates how little we know and how much we should know.  It sheds light on the administration, it's foreign policy process, it's general approach and attitude, and why post-war Iraq is turning into a quagmire.   To give you a little preview, as Fallows states:  "The Administration will be admired in retrospect for how much knowledge it created about the challenge it was taking on. . . . But the Administration will be condemned for what it did with what was known.  The problems the United States has encountered are precisely the ones its own expert agencies warned against. . . . What David Halberstam said of Robert McNamara in The Best and the Brightest is true of those at OSD (the Office of Secretary of Defense, such as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitze, and including others civilians such as Cheney) as well: they were brilliant, and they were fools."  The article also has some links to some interesting relevant articles and cartoons.

 

"The Unseen War," The New York Review of Books (May 29, 2003), by Michael Massing.  A fascinating portrait of how the American media covered the war early on and was dominated by the military, and provides a pro-American, sanitized perspective>  Massing compares this to European coverage, especially the BBC, and Arab coverage, especially Al-Jazeera.