Product Description: Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq is the definitive collection -- systematically categorized, indexed, and footnoted for your convenience -- of authoritative misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies, about the Iraq War.
"Never before has such a large and diverse group of experts been so unanimously in favor of a particular national policy as they were in the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq," note Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, who, as co-founders of the Institute of Expertology, the nation's leading purveyor of expertise on expertise, were uniquely qualified to assemble this impressive collection. "In the face of such a consensus, we had no choice but to ask ourselves, 'Could the iron law of expertology -- the experts are never right -- be wrong?'"
At once an entertainment, a cautionary tale, a critique of mass media, a reference tool, and a postwar manifesto, Mission Accomplished! presents, as no book has before, the collective wisdom of all those who are presumed to know what they talking about on the subject of America's adventure in Iraq. As this hilarious, yet depressing, volume demonstrates, they don't.
From MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
-- President George W. Bush, May 1, 2003
"[Insurgents] pose no strategic threat to the United States or to the Coalition Forces."
-- L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, November 17, 2003
"Military action will not last more than a week."
-- Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, January 23, 2003
"I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah."
-- President George W. Bush, at a White House menorah lighting ceremony, December 10, 2001
So Much for Experts! Mission Accomplished : How We Won the War in Iraq???
The so-called EXPERTS sure fooled themselves and some of the gullible. Thanks to the authors for giving the real history and written facts of the IRAQ debacle and who predicted what. I'm still wondering how the prognosticators of victory still hold their jobs. A must Read for young and old alike.
Light Snack, But Good Fun and funny (considering the topic). Good information. The point made is that everybody, on both sides, lined up to regurgitate the party line on the war in Iraq. Bush administration lies became gospel through pundits, press, politicians and prognosticators. "Won't get fooled again"? - I guess we did. Worth owning if only as a reference point on Amerikan propaganda. Looks like we didn't destroy the iron curtain of misinformation, we just moved inside it.
A time to laugh about reality The Iraq war is serious and real. However, what "experts", political, industry and others have said, and continue to comment on is hiseterical -- and from another world. I have not stopped laughing yet!! While they "thought" that they could predict and correctly interpert what was happening, reality constantly proves otherwise. There are quotes from the book that will last forever --- "The next six months is critical" for example.
One wonders if truth will ever come to light. At least laughing helps not becoming depressed.
Aghast, I read the book, alternately laughing and screaming. I throughly enjoyed the book. It is amazing just how many half-truths and un-truths were exposed as well as the cupidity of all those responsible for allowing these things to occur. The book does not adopt any but a dispassionate review of what was actually said and in what context. It is an entertaining read, and in the vein of Swift, Twain, Vonnegut, it merely says what was said, interspesring the utterances with counterpointed facts and reality. Seems that "three to six months" was and is the litany repeated over and over. As political satire it accomplishes its aim. It is a remarkable accounting of the Administration's not-unsuccessful efforts to subvert and to redesign our democratic republic. In so doing, the service it provides is inestimable. The book delivers some satiric jabs, but on the whole the feeling of disbelief I experienced made me read and re-read page after page. As a History teacher I assign it as required reading now.
Invaluable -- a library's must have The book is a page turner of quotes by people who knew or should have known what a mess was being created in Iraq. To this day, our politicians say they want to pull out of Iraq when possible so as to stop the suffering of Americans and their families -- never a mention of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who were killed and maimed and the 3 million Iraqi refugees who fled the violence to other countries. The extreme arrogance of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the duping of Condi Rice and Gen. Powell is breathtaking. Even an author who I favored reading, Thomas Friedman, carried the administration's water with the continuous (every 6 months) "just 6 more months". If any administration deserved to be impeached, it was this one. But no peep out of the legislature? Because so many of them deserve to be impeached as well. I hate to quote Bill OReilly, but what Kool Aid do these people drink that they think they know so much they can spend trillions in taxes and new debt and interfere or destroy so many lives? This book is an invaluable reference book for the lies told by Bush and his delusional minions.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
