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Allawi is excellent in recounting those events in which he was directly involved, particularly economic matters, but he can be surprisingly off-base on issues remote from his own experience. He does not understand that the reasons for the U.S. war with Iraq were firmly grounded in national security concerns, above all, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, and he is too quick to embrace the now-conventional wisdom that Saddam had no such weapons nor significant ties to terrorists. (A knowledgeable Iraqi source here says that Saddam's weapons were moved to Syria between November 2002 and February 2003 -- essentially what Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency during Operation Iraqi Freedom and now undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told reporters in the fall of 2003.)

Thus, despite Allawi's claims, the professor of political philosophy, Leo Strauss, had nothing to do with the Iraq war. The Pentagon's Office of Special Plans did not generate intelligence -- it was the policy office that dealt with Iraq and Iran, given, perhaps, an ominously inappropriate name as war with Iraq loomed. Nor is the policy debate over going to war in Iraq properly described as one between "realists" and "neo-conservatives," whom Allawi casts in a villainous light. Neither Rumsfeld nor Cheney, strong advocates of the war, fit easily into the latter category.

With these caveats in mind, Americans will learn much from this book, not only about Iraqi perspectives on the war, but about very major problems in the U.S. handling of Iraq that have contributed significantly to present difficulties, yet which have failed to receive the attention they merit.

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Foreign Policy, Trade, Environment, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Oil