The one book that most influenced my decision to support the war was Kenneth Pollack's The Threatenng Storm. Back then, the fact that he was the Clinton administration's senior official in charge of policy on Iraq seemed to me the most important factor of all.
Unfortunately, the only prudent and realistic course of action left to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam's regime and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. Every time I say or write this, I find myself wondering whether it is truly necessary. It usually sets me off rehearsing in my mind all the arguments for and against all the other options in one last effort to devise some alternative to the costs of an invasion. Having spent much of my life since the Gulf War trying to find a way out of this conundrum, I cannot.
I've just been leafing through it again. One thing I'd completely forgotten is that Fareed Zakaria and Anthony Zinni both wrote admiring blurbs for the back cover.
Some of us would find the fact that he was the "Clinton administration's senior official" sufficient reeason to distrust him.
Posted by: dearieme | Monday, March 19, 2007 at 11:30 PM