In the months leading up to March 2003, fresh
from its swift and heady victory in Afghanistan,
the Bush administration mobilized the United States
armed forces to overthrow the government of Iraq.
Eight months after the president declared an end
to major combat operations, Saddam Hussein was
captured in a farmhouse in Al-Dawr. And yet neither
peace nor democracy has taken hold in Iraq; instead
the country has plunged into terrorist insurgency
and guerrilla warfare, with no end in sight. What
went wrong?

In The Secret History of the Iraq War, bestselling
author Yossef Bodansky offers an astonishing new
account of the war and its aftermath -- a war that
was doomed from the start, he argues, by the massive
and systemic failures of the American intelligence
community. Drawing back the curtain of politicized
debate, Bodansky -- a longtime expert and director
of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare -- reveals that nearly every
aspect of America's conflict with Iraq has been
misunderstood, in both the court of public opinion
and the White House itself. Among his revelations:

- The most authoritative account of Saddam Hussein's
support for Islamic terrorist organizations --
including extensive new reporting on his active
cooperation with al-Qaeda in Iraq long after the
fall of Baghdad
- Extensive new information on Iraq's major chemical
and biological weapons programs -- including North
Korea's role in building still-undetected secret
storage facilities and Iraq's transfer of banned
materials to Syria, Iran, and Libya
- The first account of Saddam's plan for Iraq, Syria,
and Iran to join Yasser Arafat's Palestinian forces
to attack Israel, throw the region into turmoil, and
upend the American campaign
- The untold story of Russia's attempt to launch a
coup against Saddam before the war -- and how the
CIA thwarted it by ensuring that Iraq was forewarned
- Dramatic details about Saddam's final days on the run,
including the untold story of a near miss with U.S.
troops and the stunning revelation that Saddam was
already in custody at the time of his capture -- and
was probably betrayed by members of his own Tikriti clan
- The definitive account of the anti-U.S. resistance and
uprising in Iraq, as the American invasion ignited an
Islamic jihad and Iran-inspired intifada, threatening to
plunge the region into irreversible chaos fueled by hatred
and revenge
- Revelations about the direct involvement of Osama bin
Laden in the terrorism campaigns in Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
and the rest of the Middle East -- including the major
role played by Iran and HizbAllah in al-Qaeda's operations

Drawing upon an extraordinary wealth of previously untapped
intelligence and regional sources, The Secret History of the
Iraq War presents the most detailed, fascinating, and
convincing account of the most controversial war of our times
-- and offers a sobering indictment of an intelligence system
that failed the White House, the American military, and the
people of the Middle East.

Secret History of the Iraq War

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