Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq

British and American perspectives

James Pfiffner, Mark Phythian

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780719077470
  9780719077463
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526130969
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The decision to go to war in Iraq has had historic repercussions throughout the world. The editors of this volume bring together scholarly analysis of the decision-making in the U.S and U.K. that led to the war, inside accounts of CIA decision-making, and key speeches and documents related to going to war. The book presents a fascinating case study of decision-making at the highest levels in the United States and Britain as their leaders planned to go to war in Iraq. Just as the Cuban Missile Crisis has been used for decades as a case study in good decision-making, the decision to go to war in Iraq will be analysed for years to come for lessons about what can go wrong in decisions about war.

The book presents a fascinating and truly comparative perspective on how President Bush and Prime Minister Blair took their countries to war in Iraq. Each had to convince his legislature and public that war was necessary, and both used intelligence in questionable ways to do so. This book brings together some of the best scholarship and most relevant documents on these important decisions that will reverberate for decades to come.

Table of contents

• Front matter
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction: policymaking and intelligence on Iraq
• Part I Intellectual antecedents of the Iraq war
• Part II The public case for war
• Part III Intelligence failure
• Part IV Policy failure
• Part V Excerpts from key speeches and documents
• Index