President Bush did not at first advocate eliminating Saddam in 2000 (nor did Tony Blair) and in that year, too, Condoleeza Rice wrote that there was no need to panic about Saddam who had been ‘severely weakened’. As late as 2001, the authors say, Cheney told Paul Wolfowitz, a terrific champion of Israel and already Rumsfeld’s deputy, to ‘stop agitating for targeting Saddam’. One Republican accused Wolfowitz of being ‘like a parrot. It was getting on the President’s nerves.’ This was not a Jewish plot, the authors underline: ‘Rather the war was due in large part to the lobby’s influence and especially its neoconservative wing.’ Nor was it about oil — as Alan Greenspan, of all people, has just claimed. This contention has angered Noam Chomsky, for whom controlling oil was the chief incentive for the war, who attacked their article for not challenging the American imperium. Actually, the authors point out, ‘Saddam was eager to sell his oil to any customer willing to pay for it,’ and while the Saudis supported Gulf One, ‘they feared that a war would lead to the break-up of Iraq and destabilise the Middle East’. In any event, they add, a possible Shia triumph in Baghdad disturbed the Saudi Sunnis partly because such a victory would benefit Iran.

I have noted my points of disagreement, but this densely footnoted and courageous book deserves praise rather than abuse. The Israeli liberal daily Haaretz stated that it would be irresponsible to ignore [the earlier article’s] serious and disturbing message that the Israeli government must understand that the world will not wait forever for Israel to withdraw from the territories, and that the opinions expressed in the article could take root in American politics if Israel does not change the political reality quickly.

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