Rating: 
Summary: More Important than Ever for Justifying War
Review: Do the people who limit the justification for war to WMD stockpiles make you wonder if the war was justified? Read this book - it will reassure you Saddam had to go. The containment and sanctions were failing, the world was losing interest, the black market trading was more profitable than the UN's oil for food program, the Iraqi people were suffering as Saddam starved his people so he could resell food and medicines on the black market to get funding for his weapons programs (while blaming us for their starvation), the regime was torturing and murdering Iraqis, and many of our "allies" were active trading partners with Iraq in violation with UN sanctions. Saddam was systematicaaly eroding world support for the sanctions while patiently waiting on us to leave so he could get back to his WMD programs. The naysayers are not paying any attention to most of what David Kay said (Saddam had WMD programs, terrorists were there, the country was unstable, and the situation may prove to be more dangerous than we thought). This is a "must read" for those who feel partisans are foolish to couch it all on just stockpiles of weapons. They are like revenoors who give six months notice, find a still but no moonshine, then declare nothing amiss.
Rating: 
Summary: Loud and wrong
Review: One of the CIA's (and the world's) "leading experts on IRAQ", got just about everything wrong in his book. The threatening storm described by the author turned out to be anything but. No weapons of mass destruction, an Iraqi military machine in a total state of disrepair, soldiers with no commitment to a cause, a bankrupt economy incapable of supporting anything but the bare necessities. "Expert", "comprehensive and insightful", "high-quality", "detailed", "professional" analysis which scares the bejeesus out of anyone who reads it. But sadly, more often than not, totally wrong. The CIA's leading expert certainly provides cause to question the intelligence and integrity of that agency.
Rating:
Summary: Pollack takes it all back!
Review: This book should be read in conjunction with Pollack's article in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of The Atlantic Magazine where he said:
"When the United States confronts future challenges, the exaggerated estimates of Iraq's WMD will loom like an ugly shadow over the diplomatic discussions. Fairly or not, no foreigner trusts U.S. intelligence to get it right anymore, or trusts the Bush Administration to tell the truth." -Kenneth M. Pollack, in "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong,"In light of the above, it appears that either the Bush administration lied or was willfully ignorant about the 'threat of Iraq.' Whatever the reason, it does not appear as if the Bush administration was being honest to the public. Pollack's book will be of interest to future scholars about how the Iraq war was sold to the American public. Not a pretty picture since the American taxpayers will be paying for the war in decades to come.
Rating:
Summary: Hoax
Review: This book was frequently cited as the intellectual
backbone of the case for invading Iraq. Pollack now says that he and many others "were wrong
about the nature of the threat Iraq posed." He also
says the Bush Administration's "justifications and
explanations for war were at best faulty, at worst
deliberately misleading." Count Pollack with O'Neill and the Army War College
among those now exposing the Bush case for war as
an elaborate, costly -- and deadly -- hoax.
Rating:
Summary: Pollack now admits he was wrong
Review: Pollack is interviewed in the January 13, 2004 Atlantic Magazine, and he admits he was completely wrong about Saddam's WMDs. He also accuses Bush of dishonesty in the run-up to the war. Pollack says in the interview: "I think the Administration was only telling part of the truth to the American people because it was trying to justify a war in 2003. The intelligence estimates just didn't really support that imminence."
Rating:
Summary: A good Bio-grapghy
Review: Me think osama bin ladin nice man. he is me idol, he is having power and respect and a beautiful wife. Me might steal his wife, she is beening beautiful. You must be having the book, it is being a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and Superbly Written
Review: In this exceptionally well-written book, Kenneth Pollack clearly and concisely takes the reader through each of the options available to the U.S. during the lead-up to the war in Iraq. He explores the issues from multiple sides, addressing both the pros and cons of each available course of action (including the "do nothing" option). Ultimately he concludes that invasion is the "least bad" option, given the situation into which we'd let ourselves slide over a 12-year period. Whether or not you agree with his conclusion, you're sure to be impressed with Dr. Pollack's thought process, objectivity, and ability to communicate his reasoning. By the time I finished the book, I felt very well-informed on the issue of Iraq. I wouldn't have felt this way if it weren't for the objective, non-ideological nature of Dr. Pollack's analysis.
Rating: 
Summary: Tragic illustration of fallacious thinking by a good man
Review: I read this book in January, before the war, and was duly impressed, as so many other reviewers were, with his overall knowledge, competence, and ability to look at all sides of all major issues and dispassionately assess the arguments on both sides, and come to reasoned conclusions. With two glaring exceptions, that have been proven correct, refuting his core conclusion, in the last 6 months. Since others have fully described all the excellent features of this book, I will devote myself to these two fatal, tragic flaws. Pollack's chapter in which he justifies a U.S. invasion is highly flawed, for a very important reason. Having stated convincingly why continued sanctions, and even strong inspections, would not be enough to topple Saddam, and having made the case that he must be toppled before he can truly menace the world, Pollack concludes that no course remained but a U.S. invasion. To be fair to him, as I recall (I read this book almost a year ago), even he did not imagine a totally go-it-alone effort, but one backed by the UN. But even so, once he concluded that military force was needed, he then made a series of disastrously self-deluding justifications. Starting with the argument, used, of course, by the Bush Administration as well, that toppling Saddam would allow the U.S. to set up a model democracy that would help transform the Middle East. What a tragic miscalculation that is proving to be! Pollack never mentioned, and for him this is a curious lapse, given his generally insightful understanding of the Middle East reality, what the image of the army of a Christian country occupying and governing a Muslim, Arab country, would represent to Iraqis and the rest of the Arab and Muslim worlds. I would argue that noone who truly understood the reality would believe that setting up a Western-style democracy in the foreseeable future was a workable prospect. I don't think Pollack would have believed it possible, if it weren't that he fell into the all too human trap of trying to find after the fact justifications to bolster a conclusion arrived at for other reasons. In other words, I suggest that Pollack, having come very reluctantly to the conclusion that an invasion was necessary, then fell into the trap of trying to find other "side benefits" of such an invasion, to make it seem more desirable an alternative than it really was. He thus grossly misestimated the costs and difficulties, which are only now apparent to the world. But he should have known better. I told the person who lent me the book, who was initially convinced by Pollack's argument, why it was flawed, in January. It was not impossible to foretell that Pollack's rosey view of how an invasion would unfold was wildly optimistic and highly unlikely. That said, I want to comment that both Pollack, and virtually everyone else on this topic, have displayed a poverty of imagination on other courses than 1) invasion, 2) do nothing, 3) intensify inspections to prevent WMD programs from coming to fruition. First of all, there was an excellent rationale for military action that would have been honest, would have been almost impossible for Europe to oppose, and would have sanctioned U.S. unilatera action without requiring the doctrine of preemption. Saddam's hideous regime was in clear violation of the crimes against humanity statutes. All the U.S. had to have done was introduce a resolution to condemn Saddam of such crimes. Once passed, the U.N. charter permits any country to legally take any military action it wants to against a regime so condemned. That would have made any U.S. action totally legal. Second, we then could have done lots of things to directly threaten Saddam's control. We could have began liberating the country piecemeal, cutting off and liberating the Shiite, eastern portion of Iraq, for example, the way we did the Kurdish areas, and creating a stable self-government for this populous area centered on Basra. We could have, armed with such a resolution, with a much, much smaller military commitment, begun targetted bombings of just military targets around the country, on a prolonged schedule. A war of attrition, not an all out invasion. And any number of other measures to really cripple Saddam and his ability to command his forces. But no one I am aware of even posed either of these approaches. Finally, I said there were two blind spots. The second is that Pollack was proposing an abstract solution, and did not factor in that even if a unilateral invasion was the only way to go, that the Bush Administration was a fatally flawed instrument to do it, since it had all the wrong reasons, operated with total arrogance, and hence was sure to botch it even if invasion was otherwise the correct course. And both it they have done, showing that the invasion was as much about a U.S. takeover as anything else, with its ham-handed favoritism toward Cheney's company, the recent report of bringing in Filipino workers because they won't trust Iraqis to work for them (this with 50%+ unemployment), and a legion of other such examples. So, read this book for background, and as an object lesson in self-delusion of even the best informed analysts once they box themselves into certain conclusions. Peter Rush (peterrush@earthlink.net)
Rating:
Summary: Critical to Understanding Iraq
Review: This is the best analysis I have yet seen in a single volume on modern Iraq, and it's leadership. Obviously, the central point of the book that a full scale invasion of Iraq is the best option left to the world, while exhaustively analyzed, is now moot. The book is still vital to an understanding of the most recent Iraqi war and the events leading up to it, and, most importantly, why it was necessary. Kenneth Pollack spent seven years in the Clinton regime as an Iraqi analyst (and was one of only three analysts in the government who had previously predicted the invasion of Kuwait under the first Bush administration). I had expected a softer stance on invasion, given his long association with the Clinton White House, but was pleased with his balanced views of the three most recent administrations (and Reagan's, to a lesser degree). He lays bare the faults in the initial containment framework as implemented in the various UN programs after Desert Storm, and explains is painstaking detail why Containment failed as a concept under Clinton. (Hint: France, China, and Russia, are the biggest culprits, but not the only ones.) The most impressive feature of this work is the scope of the book. The first part of the book is essentially a quick history of Iraq and Saddam. The information in that part of the book is vital for an understanding of the situation we had to deal with prior to the invasion and to understanding the fallout of the war. The bulk of the book deals with analyzing all possible strategies for dealing with Iraq from deterrence to invasion. Ultimately, the author concludes (and I believe correctly) that in the long term invasion was the last resort, but the only one that would work. He particularly focuses on the Iraqi threat in the middle east to include terrorism in the Saudi oil fields, making the point that if Saddam had ever been able to control or harm Saudi oil production that the world economy would be plunged into a depression at least as severe as the Great depression in the US. Since the war is over from the military point of view (policing is left, of course), it is easy to grade his predictions on the results of the war, and Pollack is generally spot on (the exception, is that he underestimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq, as he had considered Iraqi oil revenues as a contributor, whereas the Bush administration largely has not). I would hope that those in Washington seek Pollack's counsel on Iraq. When they disregarded him in the past (especially notably in the disregard he received under Clinton from William Christopher and Madeline Albright), problems quickly developed. This is not an easy read. Often I had to review passages several times to grasp all the information presented, but in the end, my knowledge of Iraq is now hugely superior from what it was before reading this book. If you really want to understand Iraq (whether you were pro-war or antiwar) this is THE must read book.
Rating: 
Summary: Genuinely Poor Scholarship
Review: Six months later, not one drum of VX, not one vial of anthrax, not one nuclear weapon... Well Mr. Pollack, where are they?
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