Study of the strengths and weaknesses of the president's control of foreign policy during the Persian Gulf War.

From journalistic accounts like Fiasco and Imperial Life in the Emerald City to insider memoirs like Jawbreaker and Three Cups of Tea, the books about America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could fill a library. But each explores a narrow slice of a whole: two wars launched by a single president as part of a single foreign policy. Now noted historian Terry Anderson examines them together, in a single comprehensive overview. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush told advisor Karl Rove, "I am here for a reason, and this is how we're going to be judged." Anderson provides this judgment in this sweeping, authoritative account of Bush's War on Terror and his twin interventions. He begins with historical surveys of Iraq and Afghanistan-known respectively as "the improbable country" and "the graveyard of empires," and he examines US policies toward those and other nations in the Middle East from the 1970s to 2000. Then Anderson focuses on the Bush Administration, carrying us through such events as the terrorist's attacks of 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and the siege of Tora Bora, the "Axis of Evil" speech, the invasion of Iraq and capture of Baghdad, and the eruption of insurgency in Iraq. He ranges from RPGs slamming into Abrams tanks to cabinet meetings, vividly portraying both soldiers in the field and such policymakers as Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. Anderson describes the counter-insurgency strategy embodied by the "surge" in Iraq, and the simultaneous revival of the Taliban. He concludes with an assessment of the prosecution of the wars in the first years of Barack Obama's presidency. Carefully researched and briskly narrated, Bush's Wars provides the single-volume balanced history that we have waited for. This new paperback edition takes the story through the first Obama term, covering our exit from Iraq and the ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan.

With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers led the nation to war. Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council and firsthand revelations of the private thoughts, concerns and fears of the president and his war cabinet, make BUSH AT WAR an unprecedented chronicle of a modern presidency in a time of grave crisis. Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources and four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, BUSH AT WAR reveals Bush's sweeping, almost grandiose vision for remaking the world. Woodward's virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room reveals a stunning group portrait of an untested president and his advisers, three of whom might themselves have made it to the presidency. In BUSH AT WAR, Bob Woodward once again delivers a reporting tour de force.

Eminent jurists, professional legal organizations, and human rights monitors in this country and around the world have declared that President George W. Bush may be prosecuted as a war criminal when he leaves office for his overt and systematic violations of such international law as the Geneva and Hague Conventions and such US law as the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws. George W. Bush, War Criminal? identifies and documents 269 specific war crimes under US and international law for which President Bush, senior officials and staff in his administration, and military officers under his command are liable to be prosecuted. Haas divides the 269 war crimes of the Bush administration into four classes: 6 war crimes committed in launching a war of aggression; 36 war crimes committed in the conduct of war; 175 war crimes committed in the treatment of prisoners; and 52 war crimes committed in postwar occupations. For each of the 269 war crimes of the Bush administration, Professor Haas gives chapter and verse in precise but non-technical language, including the specific acts deemed to be war crimes, the names of the officials deemed to be war criminals, and the exact language of the international or domestic laws violated by those officials. The author proceeds to consider the various US, international, and foreign tribunals in which the war crimes of Bush administration defendants may be tried under applicable bodies of law. He evaluates the real-world practicability of bringing cases against Bush and Bush officials in each of the possible venues. Finally, he weighs the legal, political, and humanitarian pros and cons of actually bringing Bush and Bush officials to trial for war crimes.

George Bush's War by Jean Edward Smith chronicles the complete history of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Smith takes the reader from the politics of Desert Shield to the military action of Desert Storm. "Expressing constant misgivings about presidential warmaking, [Smith] provides a virtual day-by-day chronicle of the decisions of 1990 that led to war ... Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

This dramatic account of George Bush's life during 1941-1944, when he flew a fighter-bomber in the Pacific Theater of WW II, also tells the story of the old-fashioned courtship between the young naval officer and his one, true love, Barbara Pierce. Photographs.

One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 “The detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq is essential reading—now, especially now . . . Draper’s account [is] one for the ages . . . A must-read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post From the author of the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain comes the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy--the decision to invade Iraq. Even now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. For too many people, the damage is still too palpable, and still unfolding. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few of them are not haunted by it, in one way or another. Perhaps it's that combination, the passage of the years and the still unresolved trauma, that explains why so many protagonists opened up so fully for the first time to Robert Draper. Draper's prodigious reporting has yielded scores of consequential new revelations, from the important to the merely absurd. As a whole, the book 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. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. 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 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 process that arrived at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth--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.

This provocative book contends that George W. Bush has been treated unfairly, especially by presidential historians and the media. Argues that from the beginning scholars abandoned any pretense at objectivity in their critiques and seemed unwilling to place Bush's actions into a broader historical context.

In his unmissable new book Bob Woodward takes the reader on an inside journey from the start of the Iraq War in 2003 right up to the present day, providing a detailed, authoritative account of President Bush's leadership and the struggles among the men and women in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department. With Bush well into his second term, Woodward breaks new ground, as he has in his thirteen previous international bestsellers, including BUSH AT WAR and PLAN OF ATTACK. Woodward puts the Bush legacy in historical context as he shows this presidency in action in a way that is normally seen only years after a chief executive leaves office. He describes how Bush and his team have attempted to change the way that wars are fought, and put together a re-election campaign while re-inventing their strategy for the invasion and occupation of Iraq over and over again. Here is the behind-the-scenes story of this administration -- meetings, conversations, and memos; conflicts, manoeuvring, and anguish -- as key administration figures provide a full view of the first presidency of the twenty-first century.

A complete explanation of the U.S. decision to go to war in 2003.