Liberating Iraq

An African American soldier returns home to New York City from the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. It is a time and turbulence and change. Racism is very much alive in America. Times are tough for a young black man in America, especially one who has fought for his country in an unpopular war. Rick Talley takes what he believes the only economic road open to him: drug dealing. Prisoner of Dreams presents a large cast of characters, from small time street hustlers and pimps to Hollywood and Las Vegas celebrities, to organized crime figures. In a poignant, eye-opening memoir, the author describes his life and the times, the good and the bad, in New York City and Harlem during one of the most seminal periods in America history

"There is something to learn, literally, on every page here."--Cynthia Enloe, from the foreword "This is a fluent and highly informed account of the women of Iraq during a time of ever increasing political turmoil, economic disaster and foreign invasion. It gives a fascinating insight into the way Iraqi society really works and is far superior in quality to most of what has been written about Iraq in war and peace."--Patrick Cockburn, author of Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq

One of our most respected and controversial liberal thinkers makes the case for war in Iraq. Written in his trademark contrarian voice, Untitled on Iraq is comprised of Hitchens' essays on the justification for war in Iraq and other related issues written for Slate.com, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and more, as well as 25% new material on the war

Drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton Kutcher. 24-year-old professional wrestler Walter (Kutcher) leaves the national team to return to his hometown following the brutal murder of his twin sister Annie (Sarah Lind). When he accompanies his mother Gloria (Kathy Bates) to bereavement therapy sessions at the local community centre, he meets Linda (Pfeiffer), the widowed mother of a teenaged deaf-mute son, Clay (Spencer Hudson). As the court case for his sister's killers runs its course and he struggles to comes to terms with the dual losses of his career and his sister, a relationships gradually blossoms between Walter and Linda.

Investigating the transformation of the Kurdish liberation movement in Iraq this book explores its development from an armed guerrilla movement, engaged in a war for liberation with the government in Baghdad, into the government of a de facto Kurdish state known as the Kurdistan Regional Government. The book seeks to better explain the nature and evolution of the Kurdish liberation struggle in Iraq, which has had important implications over regional geopolitics. Despite attracting growing international attention, the struggle remains understudied. By applying the theoretical framework of de facto statehood to the post-1991 Kurdish liberation movement, the book offers a new approach to understanding the struggle, with a thorough empirical investigation informed by International Relations theory. Identifying international legitimacy, interaction and identity as significant themes in the politics of de facto states and important variables shaping the evolution and policies of these actors, at both the domestic and international levels, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Middle East Politics and Political Science.

If you were to talk to those who experienced the Iraq War from the inside, the word you might hear most often is “surreal.” Don Eberly, a senior official at USAID during the lead-up to the war, was recruited to serve on a post-war civil administration team, and his two years of service spanned all phases of the operation. He was, in fact, the first American civilian to make his way into Baghdad city hall after the occupation. From that up-close perspective Eberly describes what happened in an Iraq completely battered and broken--politically, physically, and psychologically. His ground-level account reveals how the flawed approach adopted by senior officials at the Pentagon--captured in the mantra “brief stay, light touch”--resulted in severe troop shortages and an inadequate plan for post-war stabilization. An insider’s account of what really goes on in a war zone, Liberate and Leave provides a personal tour of the weeks and months before and after the “liberation”--the secret planning process with all its complexities and doubts; attempts to set up a new government amidst lawlessness and looting; painfully vexing policy decisions set against dramatic discoveries of Saddam’s torture chambers and obscenely lavish personal palaces. A searing indictment of a military command utterly out of touch with practical reality, this book, written in a clear, accessible style, offers much-needed insight into how the ways of war and the ways of the world inevitably intersect--and diverge--in our day.

This book is a history of the present. It charts and grasps the rhythms and realities of the monumental historical events since September 11 in the heat of the moment. Writing from experience of a human being and a Kurdish writer on the receiving end of the historical upheavals in the Middle East, Kamal Mirawdeli demonstrates a great degree of deep insight, intelligent analysis and realistic assessment of the background, context and direction of events and the role of the United States in the transformation of the Middle East, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq, from despotic entities frozen in forgotten anachronisms to liberated democratic societies. Although the articles cover over three years (first article published on 02 May 2002, the last one on 4 November 2004) during which events twist and turn, a principled consistency informs the writer''s judgements emanating from a strong belief in the universal values of liberation, democracy and human rights and inevitability of democratic change. Mirawdeli strongly argues that the intervention of the US, both political and military for regime change and the promotion of the ideals and examples of liberation and democracy in the Middle East, is a necessary historical factor in which the universal values of freedom and democracy, the security and economic interests of the United States and the hopes and aspirations of millions of oppressed and enslaved human beings for emancipation and human rights, coincide. The significance Mirawdeli''s ideas and their astonishing validity and accuracy emanate from their instantaneousness. He analyses and assesses the unfolding historical events in the moment of their birth which he in fact inscribes asthe moment of their truth. Hence, it is interesting to see how he reconciles his strong criticism of certain aspects of the US''s policy with his strong belief in the inevitability and essentiality of a strong US leadership role in establishing a new democratic order in the Middle East.

“Essential . . . one for the ages . . . a must read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post “Authoritative . . . The most comprehensive account yet of that smoldering wreck of foreign policy, one that haunts us today.” —LA Times One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 To Start a War paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. Robert Draper’s fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective scurrying for evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false—evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.

According to conventional wisdom, Iraq has suffered because the Bush administration had no plan for reconstruction. That's not the case; the State Department's Future of Iraq group planned out the situation carefully and extensively, and Middle East expert David Phillips was part of this group. White House ideologues and imprudent Pentagon officials decided simply to ignore those plans. The administration only listened to what it wanted to hear. Losing Iraq doesn't't just criticize the policies of unilateralism, preemption, and possible deception that launched the war; it documents the process of returning sovereignty to an occupied Iraq. Unique, as well, are Phillips's personal accounts of dissension within the administration. The problems encountered in Iraq are troubling not only in themselves but also because they bode ill for other nation-building efforts in which the U.S. may become mired through this administration's doctrine of unilateral, preemptive war. Losing Iraq looks into the future of America's foreign policy with a clear-eyed critique of the problems that loom ahead.