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A sobering look at the intimate relationship between political power and the news media, When the Press Fails argues the dependence of reporters on official sources disastrously thwarts coverage of dissenting voices from outside the Beltway. The result is both an indictment of official spin and an urgent call to action that questions why the mainstream press failed to challenge the Bush administration’s arguments for an invasion of Iraq or to illuminate administration policies underlying the Abu Ghraib controversy. Drawing on revealing interviews with Washington insiders and analysis of content from major news outlets, the authors illustrate the media’s unilateral surrender to White House spin whenever oppositional voices elsewhere in government fall silent. Contrasting these grave failures with the refreshingly critical reporting on Hurricane Katrina—a rare event that caught officials off guard, enabling journalists to enter a no-spin zone—When the Press Fails concludes by proposing new practices to reduce reporters’ dependence on power. “The hand-in-glove relationship of the U.S. media with the White House is mercilessly exposed in this determined and disheartening study that repeatedly reveals how the press has toed the official line at those moments when its independence was most needed.”—George Pendle, Financial Times “Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston are indisputably right about the news media’s dereliction in covering the administration’s campaign to take the nation to war against Iraq.”—Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune “[This] analysis of the weaknesses of Washington journalism deserves close attention.”—Russell Baker, New York Review of Books
Polls show that a sizeable portion of the American population believes that troops found WMD in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for the attacks of September 11. Even after the 9/11 Commission Report and numerous other reports have concluded that our intelligence was flawed, people in the freest nation on earth continue to be misinformed about something that could not be more vital to understand—the reasons for sending troops into harm's way. This insightful analysis argues that the media should have done a better job of performing its traditional role of skeptic and watchdog, and it examines what went wrong. There are, of course, many people whose support for going to war in Iraq was not contingent on the existence of WMD or a connection to al-Qaeda. But many others based their support for the war on misinformation. Dadge explores why the media did not aggressively investigate the claims made by the administration and intelligence agencies; in short, why they did not do their job: to fully inform the citizenry to the best of their ability. He examines pressures from the Bush administration, pressures from corporate consolidation of media ownership, patriotism and self-censorship, and other factors. He concludes with recommendations for ways in which the media can improve their reporting on government.
A high-ranking general's gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of military command, Bolger offers a unique assessment of these wars, from 9/11 to the final withdrawal from the region. Writing with hard-won experience and unflinching honesty, Bolger makes the firm case that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we lost -- but we didn't have to. Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And, at the root of our failure, we never really understood our enemy. Why We Lost is a timely, forceful, and compulsively readable account of these wars from a fresh and authoritative perspective.
Many Democrats in the Senate are fearful of George W. Bush and "his unscrupulous political strategist, Karl Rove," writes Elizabeth Drew. The House, meanwhile, is run by Republican Whip Tom DeLay, "the mean-spirited partisan from Texas" who has polarized the chamber along party lines. How did we get to this point under a president who ran on a promise to unite rather than divide, and how has our government been affected? Elizabeth Drew's answers to these questions begin by exposing the cynicism of the Bush presidential campaign, orchestrated by Rove. She also reveals the deep division between the neocons in the Defense Department and the realists in the State Department. The controversy between the two camps, she finds, has "brought out bitterness and knife-wielding of a sort that Washington has seldom seen." The result, she concludes, is that "the increasing unwillingness to compromise is not only blocking legislation but, it is not overdramatic to say, is subverting fundamental concepts of democracy." Russell Baker in his preface writes: "In Washington an age of moral and philosophical sterility is deeply entrenched, and as Elizabeth Drew's reporting attests, the result is not pretty .... Since [the end of the cold war] government has seemed to be mostly about raising money to get elected, and then reelected repeatedly in order to service those who put up the money. There is no moral urgency in it, no philosophical imperative at work."
Mission Failure argues that, in the past 25 years, the U.S. military has turned to missions that are largely humanitarian and socio-political - and that this ideologically-driven foreign policy generally leads to failure.
The United States national-security establishment is vast, yet the United States has failed to meet its initial objectives in almost every one of its major, post-World War II conflicts. Of these troubled efforts, the US wars in Vietnam (1965-73), Iraq (2003-11), and Afghanistan (2001-present) stand out for their endurance, resource investment, human cost, and miscalculated decisions. Because overarching policy goals are distant and open to interpretation, policymakers ground their decisions in the immediate world of short-term objectives, salient tasks, policy constraints, and fixed time schedules. As a consequence, they exaggerate the benefits of their preferred policies, ignore the accompanying costs and requirements, and underappreciate the benefits of alternatives. In Planning to Fail, James H. Lebovic argues that a profound myopia helps explain US decision-making failures. In each of the wars explored in this book, he identifies four stages of intervention. First and foremost, policymakers chose unwisely to go to war. After the fighting began, they inadvisably sought to extend or expand the mission. Next, they pursued the mission, in abbreviated form, to suboptimal effect. Finally, they adapted the mission to exit from the conflict. Lebovic argues that US leaders were effectively planning to fail whatever their hopes and thoughts were at the time the intervention began. Decision-makers struggled less than they should have, even when conditions allowed for good choices. Then, when conditions on the ground left them with only bad choices, they struggled furiously and more than could ever matter. Policymakers allowed these wars to sap available capabilities, push US forces to the breaking point, and exhaust public support. They finally settled for terms of departure that they (or their predecessors) would have rejected at the start of these conflicts. Offering a far-ranging and detailed analysis, this book identifies an unmistakable pattern of failure and highlights lessons we can learn from it.
Shifts in public opinion have had an impact on U.S. foreign policy
Argues that the nature of economic power has changed and that the U.S. must develop the will and the flexibility to regain its international leadership role.
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002. The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified. In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations—analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind—were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation. In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved.