One of the most interesting books ever to be published about the war in Iraq was written by Douglas Feith, Under-Secretary of State in the George W. Bush Administration, and is called War and Decision. Unlike many journalists or political opponents of the war, Feith was inside all the decisions and thinking of the Administration at the highest levels, from the inception of the Administration. He was able to draw on personal dairy notes and recollections from the meetings of the key Administration officials, beginning with the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Feith recalls the very first assessments done about America's role in a post-9/11 world — assessments carried out with senior Administration officials, as they returned to the US on a military plane from Russia, to get around the global grounding of civilian airlines. Part and parcel of that process was a series of thorough and frank analyses concerning the existential threats posed to the US and its interests. An integral part of these analyses dealt with the threats posed by Iraq.
Feith posits that the containment policy through the 1990s to constrain Saddam Hussein had not been successful, that Saddam Hussein had both used and coveted weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), that he had supported terrorists, and that he had a singular history of aggression. In the post-9/11 world, the possibility of terrorism on a massive scale greatly sharpened the Administration's thinking.[1]
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