Customer Reviews

The Battle for Iraq: BBC News Correspondents on the War against Saddam

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For me, the one thing I can always count on from the BBC is quality. I had the opportunity to watch BBC coverage of the war as well as many other American and European networks and by far I felt the coverage the BBC had was the most in depth and even handed. So it was a quick decision for me to buy this book once I found it in the shop. I was not disappointed, but I would add that I was not overwhelmed either. Overall I thought the book was interesting and well written. The authors go into a depth with many stories that just could not be done on TV. They also go a very good job of covering the British politics. I know that reading a historical account of an event as large as this little more then a few months after the end is a bit risky, but I wanted to learn more so I gave it a go.

I only complaint would be that that there was not enough battle front reports in the book. I wanted more detail on the battles and the book just did not give me enough. There is also a slight let down reading about a battle when the author practices a bit of British understatement. I want drama and excitement with my battle details. This is a small complaint, overall the book comes off as even handed and well written. There will no doubt be a number of books to come out of this war for decades to come and I bet many of those books will reference this book because of the high quality of the BBC reporting. If you want an early book this is a good one.

Look in this book for a mainline, UK media perspective on how and why the 2003 war happened. Beyond shallow newsbytes, this report goes deeper into the macro forces behind the pro and con debates for the 2003 war. Favorite Quotes:
--There was more to this than a dictator's vanity. It was a careful and conscious political strategy to provide the Iraqi leader with such a sense of permanence in the eyes of his people that any alternative would seem unthinkable. It was the very essence of totalitarianism.
-- "The majority of the Arab leaders feel challenged by the idea of a new Iraq," the Jordanian political commentator Uriab Rantawi told me from his office in central Amman. "Iraqi oil will rival Saudi oil on the world markets. A moderate Iraq with strong ties to the West would challenge Egypt's regional role. A democratic Iraq would challenge all Arab countries."
--"There are 22 members of the Arab League and not a democracy among them," he said "The main obstacle to change is our own rulers. The coalition took on the worst of them and threatened the others and they're responding. Egypt is now proposing to abolish state security courts and hard labour and set up a higher council for human rights. It may be cosmetic but it might at least allow civil society to begin to work."
-- The easiest way to secure large supplies of oil from Iraq, and lower prices, would always have been to ignore Saddam's misdeeds, lift sanctions, and let the oil flow freely again. This isn't to deny that the US may try to exploit its position after the war, or that it may apply pressure on Iraq to undermine OPEC by increasing production.