Book Review (Iraq War)

I just finished this book.  It tells the story of the pile of deceit, lies and good old fashioned tail-covering that led up to the "WMD" pretext for the Iraq war.  There were of course no WMDs at all but unfortunately the Bush Administration lacked the ability (dare I say "intelligence"?) to see through it, particularly because it served their own preconceived desires.  Too bad for all the soldiers and civilians who paid for it dearly in a completely meaningless conflict.  Here is my review from Goodreads:

Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq by Bob Drogin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you are an American citizen, this book should make you angry. If you are from another country, it will confirm in your mind the incredible amount of stupidity that flows out of Washington DC, particularly at the beginning of the Iraq war.

Curveball is the name of a not-very-bright Iraqi defector to Germany who wove an improbable, inconsistent, and not very believable tale of mobile germ-warfare weapons labs and stockpiles of weapons in Iraq. The Germans wound up not believing his story, and pretty much came to the conclusion that he was mentally unstable. However, the Bush administration, desperate to find a pretext for invading Iraq and most particularly the CIA eagerly swallowed Curveball's tale whole. The interesting thing was the CIA had never even interviewed Curveball in person before assuring Bush and Cheney that indeed this was the real deal.

It didn't help any that the relationship between the CIA and most other intelligence agencies was purely poisonous and not the rosy 'brotherhood against terror' that Bush told the world. The Germans in particular were still smarting over some arrogant high-handed treatment by the Americans a year or two earlier.

The book tells the tale well and completely and makes it plain that many of the people in the CIA were successful in covering their a__es but also many good, capable career intelligence people left in disgust. The last chapter covers a hastily-arranged White House lunch with Bush, Cheney, Rice and the chief 'WMD finder' for the CIA in Iraq. It is plain that even then when everyone else in the world knew the truth, Bush and Cheney were not quite ready to let go of the myth.

I found myself wanting to reach through the pages of the book and crash their heads together and say "...you morons...just how does it feel to completely destroy a sovereign nation and kill so many people for absolutely no reason ?".