Rating: 
Summary: Where is the evidence? Where are the sources?
Review: As a book on history, this one is atypical, for the reason that no references are given nor are any sources quoted. The author believes that revealing his sources will put them in grave danger, and so he refrains from doing it. Readers will therefore have to take his word on the accuracy of the content of the book, which may be difficult to do given the extreme (and justified) skepticism that accompanies any discussion of the war in Iraq. The author has written an interesting and engaging book, but one must leave to future analysis whether what he puts down in print is accurate.
There are many surprises in the book if a reader compares its contents with what is being reported in the American news media. Some of these include: 1. The plan by Iraq and Syria to proactively thwart the war on terrorism. 2. The move by Syria to expand military assistance to Iraq by creating a network of fictitious companies. 3. The visit to Syria of Kim Yong-Nam to forge an alliance with Syria, Iraq, and Iran. 4. The pre-war strike (by many months) on Iraqi air defense installations. 5. The pre-war arrival of 150 al-Qaeda terrorists in northern Iraq as preparation for operations in Western Europe. 6. The plan by Hussein for a counterattack across the whole Middle East, involving ballistic missiles that had chemical and biological warheads (this is one place where the reader is dying to know what the author's proof of this is). 7. The plans by Moscow to launch a preemptive coup against Hussein, and its consequent rejection by the American government. The author describes the administration as being "horrified" by these plans, who would have to face the political consequences of "somebody else taking credit for toppling Hussein's regime." The author claims that Washington deliberately tried to foil the Russian plan via a leak to Egyptian intelligence, and the Russians retaliated by refusing to give Washington any intelligence on Iraqi opposition. The author believes that this "hands-off" stance was a clear detriment to the United States.
The author lays the blame of the debacle in Iraq on the intelligence community. If by `intelligence' he means a reasoned measure of the attitudes of the Iraqi people as well as an awareness of the military capabilities of Iraq, then he is correct. The current administration had the capability of finding out just what kind of weapons the Iraq regime possessed, but they chose unfortunately to not been exhaustive in their search. They completely ignored, or perhaps did not even think to consider, the thoughts of the Iraqi people on the conflict they were to face. It is becoming more apparent as time goes on that the Iraqi people view the war as an invasion and occupation, that the Americans are invaders and not liberators. They are rejecting completely the notion of a pro-American Iraq.
The author does not discuss any alternative reasons the war in Iraq, no doubt because he is a historian and wants to concentrate on the actual historical events in the war. It would seem though that he would believe that the war was justified if only the intelligence were valid. When reading the book, it would be difficult to view the action in Iraq as one that was driven by the energy needs of the United States. The author does not outline any evidence that might support this view. One should not conclude however that the lack of evidence in this book for this view supports the position that this war was not a "war for oil". It is very difficult for some, possibly this author, to believe that the United States would engage in such a brutal attack for this reason. For others though, including this reviewer, the belief that Iraq was a war for oil, but masked cleverly behind "national security" needs, is one that sounds highly credible and possesses a large amount of evidence.
Rating: 
Summary: So Secret He Can't Reveal His Sources
Review: At 570 pages, The Secret History of the Iraq War weighs in as one of the larger works published to date on this subject. Yossef Bodansky apparently finished writing in the first half of 2004, so this book is able to offer commentary on the year of fighting that had passed since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1, 2003.
To his credit, Bodansky has provided a generous index (very helpful when dealing with places and people that are largely unfamiliar to most Americans), and has consulted a huge number of sources. Unfortunately, he fails to provide footnotes, and (even though many of his quotes are from the press and other publicly available sources) explains his failure as necessary to protect the lives of his (anonymous) sources. This makes it very difficult assess the validity of some of Bodansky's more controversial claims -- such as that the Iraqis sent a huge convoy of weapons and personnel to Syria during the course of the main fighting in 2003.
The "Race to Baghdad" chapters provide a detailed, and gripping account of the invasion from Kuwait, and show that this campaign was much harder fought (and its outcome much less certain) than is generally believed. On the other hand, a major source of Bodansky's more pessimistic pronouncements on this phase of the war appear to be based on Russian GRU (Russian military intelligence organization, which maintains a public web site) reports, which generally cast the performance of the American forces in the worst possible light, while praising the Iraqis.
Much has gone wrong since May 1, 2003, and in Bodansky's view, the Americans are incapable of doing almost anything right, the CIA continues to provide inadequate intelligence. According to Bodansky, American successes come mostly from following Israeli intelligence, weapons, and tactics. If Bodansky is right, it's small wonder that the Islamic world considers the Americans and the Israelis to be its enemies.
I find convincing Bodansky's assertions of Syrian/Iranian complicity in attempting to make the American occupation of Iraq as difficult as possible. It's hardly surprising that these two countries, which feel surrounded by American forces, would engage in what can be regarded as defensive strategies to decrease the chances of success by their enemies. It seems likely that much of the Islamic world sees Iraq as an opportunity to inflict the sort of humbling defeat on the Americans in Iraq that was inflicted on the Russians in Afghanistan 20 years ago.
There is a wealth of information in The Secret History of the Iraq War, but without footnotes, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. I suspect this book includes large amounts of both -- and the reader will need to weigh Bodansky's claims carefully against what is known from other sources, such as Anthony Cordesman's Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must Read for any one seeking the truth.
Review: Bodansky did it again. And since he foresaw the rise o bin Laden and the attacks on America so accurately in the past, his revelations of the US intelligence failures before and during the Iraqi war and his conclusions should signal a wake- up call to us all. He closes not only the wide gap left by the 9/11 Commission's report regarding the Saddam- al Qaeda's connection, but also helps us understand why and how the US ended unnecessarily in a weaker position after the war in Iraq.
In The Secret History of the Iraq War, Bodansky lays out in a meticulously researched and frightening page-turner, the details of the US intelligence failure in providing accurate information and analysis to the White House, the US defense forces and Congress. Every American should read this convincing book to fully understand the danger the US is facing today because of the failure of our intelligence services. Their dreadful performance put not only Americans in danger but also the people of the Middle East and beyond. His clear message, similar to the 9/11 Committee's conclusion is that unless we manage to revamp our intelligence services the US' future is rather bleak. The Secret History of the Iraqi War is a must read for anyone concern with US national security.
Rachel Ehrennfeld, author of Funding Evil, How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It. Bonus Books, 2003.
Rating:
Summary: A Serious Work
Review: Folks that are inclined to write this book off as conspiracy, because its sources are not always referenced have a fundamental mis-understanding of how intelligence comes together. The scope and depth of this account is almost overwhelming, and its a cold glass of water in the face for those who still believe that 9/11 was going to lead to a "War" on Terror along the lines of the "War" on Drugs. Its been said that when one has been decieved it is never like a magic show where you laugh at the immediate realization that you've been tricked. It is a slow, creeping sense of dread when you begin to realize you've been had, and it quickly creates a bond between deceiver and deceived; one is reluctant to face the reality of the deception and the other is eager to reinforce that reluctance. The U.S. has been out maneuvered by our enemies plain and simple, and our naievete, our arrogance, the unwillingness of our adolescent-minded intelligentsia to put forth any case to the world for liberal democracy, and most significantly, the incredible failure of our risk averse intelligence apparatus are all to blame. There has been very little in the way of serious honest writing and analysis on the war against muslim fascism over the past 18 months, and in fact much of it has been agit/prop poison (M. Moore, Chomsky etc.). Only a ham-handed cliche of an endorsement will suffice -"if you read only one foreign policy book this year, make it Bodansky's!!"
Rating:
Summary: Another winner by Bodansky
Review: For those whose sole source for news and analysis is from the media -- don't read this book -- as it extensively relies on human intelligence, private sources, and many years of proven experience in reliably predicting events of existential import for the U.S. and its allies.
Bodansky's prescience accurately forecast the Bin Laden attack on the U.S. two years prior to September 11 and even then we found some rather dense people scoffing at the absurd thought of a Bin Laden attack on the U.S. Bodansky's information is for the most part confirmed by the July 7, report of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence or not addressed at all due to admitted inadequate intelligence. This highlights, by the current and past U.S. administrations, the salient question of unsatisfactory attention to details, perhaps subordinated to perceived political necessities.
Bodansky elucidates the specter of an imperial Iran engaged in combat with the U.S. for control of the Levant and ultimately the energy producing Gulf countries. He clarifies the trap that the U.S. has entered and the predictable coalescing of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq into a Shiite force reminiscent of ancient Persia.
Reacting to Bodansky, the ultimate word smith, is not to emulate an ostrich but to understand the jeopardy facing the U.S. and act, not politically nor subject to election campaign pressure, but with pragmatic solutions that offer hope to this catastrophe in which we are engaged.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible and In-Depth Book on the Iraq War
Review: I hope this book does not become a political issue with liberals dismissing it as con rhetoric. Mr. Bodansky KNOWS his stuff but good.
Bodansky makes clear why there is simply no doubt that America had an urgent imperative to go to war against Iraq when it did. He notes ongoing cooperation between Saddam's intelligence services and Osama bin Laden's terrorists -- which began as far back as the early 1990s -- and reveals the shocking extent to which Saddam's Iraq was involved in international terrorist activities, including its supplying of operational WMDs to al Qaeda in fall 2002.
Bodansky also explores the jihad that Shi'ites and other Muslim groups began to wage with great fervor after Saddam's fall. He explains why the conflict didn't end with the fall of Saddam, exploring the pivotal roles of Iran and al Qaeda in stoking hostilities in postwar Iraq, and detailing the nature of the jihadist forces that America faces now. With a historian's long view of the present conflicts and a keen understanding of the forces at play in Iraq and the Middle East in general, Bodansky assesses strategic mistakes that have been made thus far in Iraq, and explains what we must do now to secure a lasting victory.
Some startling revelations include: Discovered in England: "the smoking gun" supporting the Bush administration's insistence that Saddam's Iraq was a central player in global terrorist efforts...
France's offers of lavish military, economic and political aid to the Iraqi Shi'ites - deliverable only after they evicted the Americans...
Why America and her allies were unprepared for the possibility that most Iraqis would consider themselves occupied and reject the lure of democratization...
How the CIA's decision to employ officials of Saddam's old regime to rebuild Iraq only aggravated several severe misunderstandings of Iraqi realities, endangering the Americans there...
This is NOT a pro-war book or anti-war book...it is a truthful and unbiased look at the events leading up to the war during, and after. Well Done!
Rating:
Summary: A good book, but...
Review: I would say that this is a good book. It has a lot of fascinating information that I wish our nation's leaders would make our citizens fully aware of. Most specifically, the role of Iran and Syria in all of this. I would recommend this book, but I must take some exceptions to the book:
1) Bodansky thinks that the US has done a horrible job in Iraq, and will continue to. He even thinks that a Russian-supported coup would have been better, which I strongly disagree with.
Look, the US has made mistakes in the war, no doubt about it. But the author consistently blasts the US throughout the book. The war and reconstruction weren't executed perfectly, yes, I agree - but I think he went over the top. Sir, you don't have to say it every four pages - we get the point.
The author is quite pessimistic in another way. Not only has the US made "colossal" blunders and made a mess of things, he says, but also that almost the whole country hates us. If I was blinded to the outside world, I would think that most of Iraq's 25 million inhabitants were either terrorists or terrorist-supporters. Yet Iraqi polls and soldiers home from the war tell a story that is completely opposite.
The author was very pessimistic about whether the transfer of sovreignity would take place before July 1. It did, and it even went better than I expected. And no terrorist attacks when power was transferred.
Overall, I just think that the author is too overly pessimistic. If things are really as bad as he says, then I could accept that. But they're not. I mean, think about it - we're bringing democracy to a nation in the Middle East. I'm not sure democracy will take root in Iraq. The American Experiment is a smashing success. Yeah, Iraq is in downtown of the Islamic world. But they are also humans. More than 200 years ago, democracy itself was a radical idea. Perhaps it still is.
One last thing. This book is VERY long. I had to really push myself to finish the last 200 pages. And I've literally fallen asleep dozens of times trying to read it. The book is both fascinating and boring.
I recommend this book, but be aware the author doesn't stick solely with the facts, he mixes in his opinion. This book is great from a factual perspective. But you really need to commit yourself to read it through.
Rating:
Summary: WMDs are there and in use.
Review: Im a little concerned about the review by the "Defense Editor" in Germany. Having only the basic tool of the internet I was able to find that his primary reason for dis-counting the quality of the factual evidence in this book was wrong. He claimed that US and other experts have found no evidence of WMDs, program or otherwise. This is a false claim. David Kay (a former UN weapons inspector) said that he found evidence of a strong dual use chemical program less than a year ago. US troops were attacked earlier this summer (May) with a sarin (nerve agent) shell and one month before that a shell containing mustard gas (a blister agent) was discovered. In June, Polish troops recovered multiple chemical weapons containing cyclo-sarin (a more modern and deadly version of sarin nerve agent) in Iraq. You dont need secret sources to know that Iraq had WMDs at the time of the invasion or that these weapons still pose a threat to US and coalition forces. MR. Charles Thibo "The Cat" can browse the anti-war US media for the facts about WMDs if he likes. That is where I found all the cases I stated above. These cases are also why I am inclined to believe the assertions in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: on the "conspiracy theory" shelf
Review: Someone once said, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. Reading this book may partly explain of why one sometimes feels huge "disconnects" in political discussions: you meet people who not only don't agree on what our policies should be, but who assume a whole different set of facts.
What is annoying is that Bodansky doesn't feel any need to substantiate any of his astounding claims. (Most of this long, rambling book actually covers territory familiar to us all from reading the newspapers, but there are a few amazing assertions)
In one example of a startling-if-true story, Bodansky reports that a column of three hundred tanks, one hundred rocket launchers and "Iraq's entire WMD arsenal" supposedly left Baghdad, around the time the Americans were taking control of the airport, and made its way all the way across the country, some two hundred miles, to Syria. This was at a time when by other accounts American forces were searching from the air and effectively destroying every Iraq unit that came out into the open.
Bodansky made no effort to get a response to this story from any of the Americans, either troops, officers, or even spokespeople, on this huge failure to control the territory we had already gained. Supposedly this very long column of vehicles was seen by Apache helicopters, who were fooled by friendly markings, and the presence of a few captured American tanks, but, Bodansky makes no effort at all to pursue that aspect of the story. He claims to get much of his material from personal contacts, and yet he never seems to approach the people who we want to hear respond and comment on an episode like that. Imagine what a real investigative reporter would have done with a story like that!
Bodansky defends his avoidance of footnotes and references by claiming the need to protect his sources from being tortured to death. That might make some sense, but the problem here isn't the lack of a footnote, it's that the story is simply incredible. If it is true, it is mind-boggling. With no supporting detail, no follow-up or context, it sounds all too much like one of the false rumors that always spring up, complete with "eyewitnesses", on every battlefield, and are then bandied around for a while, now-a-days on the internet. Bodansky gives us no reason to believe it.
And in fact, nobody else believes it. Many people have discussed the "missing" WMD, since this book appeared, who would have loved to claim that they had all been taken to Syria. In fact, John Keegan, in his book on the war (he is a strong supporter of the war) mentions that David Kay referred in his report to some evidence that some WMD may have ended up in Syria. But he refers to this only in passing, not as an important factor in understanding the war. In his discussion of the Battle of Baghdad, Keegan mentions episodes involving columns of fifteen or so Iraqi tanks (they get destroyed), but no column of three hundred (and a hundred rocket launchers, etc) And the British and American administrations have not made any big deal out of this at all, as they would clearly want to do if there was any remotely substantial evidence.
In spite of its bulk, none of the rest of the book is any more substantiated than this episode. This book belongs on the conspiracy-theory shelf. If you believe Bodansky, you have to beleive that everyone else, in the media and in government, including enthusiastic supporters of the war, is systematically lying, and that Bodansky alone is giving you some teasing glimpses of the truth. I guess there are people who find that paranoid world-view attractive.
Rating:
Summary: An Interesting View that Should be Read
Review: The more about Iraq that I read, the more I have to admit that I simply don't have any idea about what's really going on over there. In fact, in this book I find some major contradictions. On the one hand he discusses the American involvement as being fundamentally flawed by a failure to understand the overall situation. But he also says that America had a viable, urgent, imperative to go to war with Iraq when it did. He states that the Iraqi populace is willingly embracing traditionalist radical Islam as the sole power capable of shielding them against American encroachment. Yet, the divisions of Kurd, Shiite and Sunni seem so large as to prevent any legitimate use of the term "the Iraqi populace."
The author's bringing to the fore a litany of facts, most of which I've confirmed from various web sites, that are indeed "secrets" so far at our television media seem to cover the story, are worth the price of the book by themselves. But I would have liked to have seen a little more supporting evidence on these points.
It's certainly clear that winning the peace after the war is proving more difficult than planned. (Or was it planned at all?) But it isn't clear just why. In talking to some recent Iraqi visitors to this country, they are asking only why it took the US so long to come in and wipe out Saddam. They say that the troubles are only being caused by a handful of fringe groups who are afraid of losing power themselves.
This is a book you can't afford to miss, yet don't make this the only book you read.
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