Volume 53, Number 3 · February 23, 2006
'The Biggest Secret'
By Thomas Powers
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
by James Risen
Free Press, 240 pp., $26.00
The challenges posed to American democracy by secrecy and by unchecked presidential power are the two great themes running through the history of the Iraq war. How long the war will last, who will 'win,' and what it will do to the political landscape of the Middle East will not be obvious for years to come, but the answers to those questions cannot alter the character of what happened at the outset. Put plainly, the President decided to attack Iraq, he brushed caution and objection aside, and Congress, the press, and the people, with very few exceptions, stepped back out of the way and let him do it.
Review, 4769 words
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