Going to War: How Misinformation, Disinformation, and Arrogance Led America Into Iraq

By Russ Hoyle

With the pacing and intrigue of a thriller, Going to War is the fullest, most detailed account yet of the U.S.-led march to war in Iraq. Veteran editor and reporter Russ Hoyle has pieced together the whole complicated story, from the Bush administration's aggressive twisting of intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to its manipulation of Congress and a compliant media in order to "sell" the war to a frightened nation. Hoyle takes us inside the White House and intelligence agencies, where we witness internal debates that took place within the Oval Office, the Office of the Vice President, the Pentagon, and the CIA after 9/11 and in the months leading up to the war. He describes the furtive steps of the White House Iraq Group--including Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Karen Hughes, and their militant neoconservative enablers--who maneuvered with Vice President Cheney to promote unfounded intelligence about Iraqi WMD and pressure the CIA to tailor its analysis to fit President Bush's war policy. We also learn about the propaganda campaign waged by Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress; Tony Blair's role in pushing the White House to use Saddam's WMD as a rationale for war, as revealed in classified British government documents; the behind-the-scenes story of Colin Powell's televised presentation to the United Nations in the months before the U.S.-led attack; the truth behind the Niger yellowcake affair and the administration's vendetta against Ambassador Joseph Wilson in leaking the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a covert CIA agent; and the grand jury investigation that led to the dramatic jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and the conviction of Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby. This is the most definitive and comprehensive portrayal to date of the forces that led us into Iraq. Hoyle helps us understand how the American public was deceived and dragged into a war whose end is nowhere in sight. Going to War tells a story that is destined to join the ranks of the great follies of U.S. diplomatic and political history.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312360355
• ISBN13: 9780312360351
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.5" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

The only really necessary history of how we went to war

That George W. Bush wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein from day one there is no doubt. It was, after all, the lament of every conservative that his father and General Powell had put on the brakes 40 miles from Baghdad in 1991. The need to finish the job was a barroom and boardroom commonplace. 9/11 fueled the fear, the rage, and the reason to get them before they get us. That Bush 2 was careless about who "them" was is historical fact, as is the falsity of his rationale - weapons of mass destruction. But how were Congress, the British, and the public brought along? The simple answer, like Robert Redford said in The Sting, is "he cheats". Yes, says the victim, but How does he do it? Russ Hoyle shows how. And it is a much more complicated tale than I for one thought. Under the microscope Bush does not appear as the puppet of Cheney or Rumsfeld or both. Rather he is a major actor himself - buying into Blair's high road strategy - WMD as justification, and Colin Powell's concurrence that a UN vote was needed for legitimacy. The decision to follow the WMD/UN strategy greatly complicated the effort to mount the campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime. And greatly frustrated Cheney and Rumsfeld. In the end the most important element may have been that the desire to take action, the belief that bad actors do bad things, led to the conclusion that possibility was probability, that fear was more important than fact. In that process the Director of the CIA knuckled under, contrary evidence was spurned, Congress trusted the untrustworthy, and the press was largely tricked and trapped into giving George Bush the free ride to Baghdad from which it will take us a generation to recover. But a generation won't be long enough unless we learn the lessons of the necessity for independent political intelligence, and independence of judgment that are the teaching of Going to War, the only really necessary book if you want to know how we went to war in Iraq.