Customer Reviews

Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of the best books on Anglo-American policy towards Iraq. Its key virtue is placing the current disaster in the context of a long pattern of war crimes and lies, going back to Winston Churchill and World War I. It was Churchill, not Saddam, who initiated the use of poison gas against civilians as a means of control. In the 1980's American satellites helped direct Saddam in the use of massive amounts of poison gas, including nerve gas, against Iranian troops. In 1991 America called on the Shiites to rise up and then did nothing while Saddam slaughtered them. I could go to list even more dishonest and criminal acts by England and America but I suggest you just read the book. If you are skeptical about any assertions in this review, just go read the book. It speaks for itself and is very well-documented.

Barry Lando's Web of Deceit opens with a detailed chronology of events concerning Iraq beginning in 1914. With an entry for nearly every year, there is but a handful of instances three gaps in time, Lando sets the factual and methodical tone and tenor of the book.

The book's ten chapters describes the creation and evolution of Iraq. In the first chapter, beginning in 1914 and spanning four and a half decades, Lando begins with a brief but useful look at pre-Twentieth Century history of the region. The real meat is the British and French actions and deals to divy up the region, which Lando uses to draw stark parallels to the current American involvement in Iraq.

The rest of the book focuses Western and Soviet involvement in shaping Iraq through support, both explicit and implicit, whether accident or not. The book concludes in August 2006 in the appropriately titled chapter "Full Circle: The Occupation" that itself concludes by reminding the reader of history 80 years before when the British occupied Iraq.

I found the book to be an exceptional and quick paced read. I also found myself constantly reading hit frequent endnotes. This book is an "investigative history" as the jacket describes, similar to Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City (a book Lando would have benefited from but was probably not released in time for his deadlines), but much broader and with greater reach-back in terms of both time and beyond the immediate superficial players. Lando peels back more layers while not getting analytical. He simply lays out the facts in an effective and accessible chronological manner creating what is essentially a compendum of the essential material analyzing (and criticizing) of Iraq, notably the Iraq War media and texts, through 2006.

I gave Web of Deceit five stars on Amazon because while it doesn't break any new ground in the 21st Century not already documented in other books like Fiasco, Imperial Life, or Plan of Attack, Web of Deceit does, provide a strong 20th Century history, including recent history, overview absent from the above three. Overall, I found this book to be a very good overview of what really is "Western complicity in Iraq" through nine decades of history motivated by short term strategies. However, the book does not feel as neutral as Fiasco or Imperial Life. It felt emotional as if it was trying to convince through facts and not just laying out the facts. Regardless, Web of Deceit should be reading lists (or syllabus) where understanding Iraq or understanding external involvement in creating despicable regimes is required. Lando's book is an strong collection of facts providing a broad overview without sacrificing detail.

This is one of two books that I have read together, both documenting the decades of deceit by both the US and UK governments, and to a much lesser degree, by France, Germany, and Russia, among others.

The two compelling facts that stay with me as I put the book down, are two:

1) From Churchill to Kennedy to Bush (Cheney), all of our Presidents in the US, but most especially Reagan, Bush, Clinton (Brzezinski), and the current and failed crew of neo conservatives that use Bush Junior as a talking doll, have been complicit--let me spell that again--complicit in the mass murders, the massacres, the torture that we first condoned and now practice ourselves. The US White House denizens are all long overdue for formal indictment, at least by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The author documents, very ably, a long string of broken promises (e.g. to the Bedouin leader for a free Arab state in return for help in WWI, to the Kurds, etc.) and complicity in mass murder. In the author's views, the sanctions are a war crime against the children, women, and elderly of Iraq, a war crime that lasted thirteen years.

2) Salaam Hussein was a creature spawned in large part by the CIA. Although I have spent 30 years in the intelligence business, it was not until I embarked on my broad non-fiction reading program that I have been able to understand that the CIA specifically, but all the rest of the classified intelligence community, is complicit in mass murders, genocides, running cocaine into the US to wipe out poor communities now addicted to crack, made affordable by the CIA's drug runners, and made politically kosher because Wall Street demands drug money--laundered drug money--for its liquidity.

I join Lee Iacocca in asking, "Where is the outrage?" There is not a candidate for President today, not even Ron Paul, who can outline in chapter and verse, as I now can on the shoulders of the 900+ authors whose hard-earned insights I have absorbed these past six years, the evil that Lionel Tiger and others show is inherent in industrialization and the centralization of power. We need to destroy the current corrupt elections process, implement electoral reform across the board, and start putting bright honorable people in office, instead of these nakedly immoral and profoundly evil creatures who will inflict any sacrifice, impose any burden, on We the People so that they may profit.

A few of the many gems from this superb work:

1) All our Presidents in recent time have lied to us, and the most humiliating of all of these lies was not the weapons of mass destruction, but the abandonment of the Kurds and the refusal to listen when Iraqi generals approached Iraqi dissidents who in turn came to the Department of State only to be shunned away. Salaam Hussein promised to leave Kuwait, but US wanted to destroy his army, and refused to hold off on what proved to be 40 hours of pure slaughter. Gulf II was not only more lies, but the active suppression of facts and dissident views, not least of which were General Tony Zinni's views--he was called a traitor by Condolezza Rice, who appears to know nothing of honor, decency, and truthfulness.

2) CIA is creating more long-term havoc than it is worth. I am finally persuaded, with absolute certainty, that we need to get out of the covert action business. CIA should become the National Analysis Agency, and the small clandestine arm should be limited to multinational operations against transnational crime and terrorism, with an Inspector General in every Station.

3) Jimmy Carter, advised by Zbig Brzezinski, comes out of this book looking both more ignorant and more unscrupulous than Reagan or either of the Bushies. Brzezinski not only masterminded the tacit okay for Pakistani development of nuclear weapons in return for aid in Afghanistan, he also began the process of helping Salaam Hussein acquire, develop, and utilize weapons of mass destruction, and I hold Brzezinski directly accountable for the mass murder of Kurds, Iraqi Shiites, and Iranians.

There are many other notes from this book that I have, but rather than lay them out here I am going to simply say that this book moves to the top of my list of books on evaluating the Iraq misadventure that has given us a $2 trillion debt and 75,000 amputees whose lives are forever shattered ***for no good reason***

The betrayal of the public trust by both the Executive and Congress, by both politicians and senior civil servants and military flag officers, has been outrageous. The author uses the words ignorance, arrogance, incompetence, amorality, illegality, hypocrisy, and cynicism sparingly. This is not a vendetta book. This is a reasons indictment and joins a host of other books that demand the immediate impeachment not only of the sitting President and Vice President, but also of the Republican ***and*** Democratic leadership in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I am ashamed of our Republic and what these amoral thieves have done "in our name." I am disheartened by the knowledge that all of our brave troops have died, been disabled, and suffered for ***no good reason.*** This makes me very angry. Angry enough to begin speaking out, pleading with America to wake up and find within itself the means for a non-violent restoration of the Constitution and We the People as individuals with liberty for all, lest America be disgraced, and our children's' futures sacrificed, forevermore. Shame, shame, shame.

Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (American Empire Project) (American Empire Project)
Unintended Consequences: The United States at War
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Statecraft as Soulcraft
Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025

This book is masterful. Big-time Bush cheerleaders like Andrew Sullivan who championed us into this tragic war, will have to reconcile their own consciences with the books revelations. The hypocrisy of the neocons and Bush worshipers is astonishing.

Pulling no punches, Barry effectively reconstructs the history of Iraq from the end of the Ottoman Empire, through the current shrub administration.

Like Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein was a monster we help create in a very big way. When he was coerced into attacking Iran, he was useful. When he gassed the Kurds and the town of Halabja, he was inconvenient, but still an ally, and was removed from the list of terrorist states. When our government (in concert with the Iranians) removed military support for the Kurdish rebellion, our government watched as he brutally massacred and gassed them with weapons he procured from us and the Germans. When he became no longer useful, we did him in. We did not allow the court to name foreigners as co-defendants, which was lucky for many in our current administration.

But what is more extraordinary, is the history of the Soviets, Israeli's and the U.S selling weapons to both Iraq and Iran during their war through the 1980's. We sold weapons to both sides (Iran - Contra Scandal), gave Saddam satellite and other intelligence, just enough to keep them both going so that, in the words of Henry Kissinger: "I hope they kill each other...".

This book provides a wealth of information for those interested in understanding some of the history of U.S interference in Iraq, and a little of the same in Iran.

Barry Lando, an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes, has written a most enlightening book. Most accounts of Iraq proceed as if there had never been any foreign intervention, and as if the tyrant Saddam just appeared from a cloudless blue sky. By contrast, Lando shows the dire effects of a century of foreign abuse.

For example, during the British occupation and counter-insurgency war of 1919-24, Winston Churchill successfully urged using gas bombs to punish Iraqis `without inflicting grave injury upon them', as he knowingly lied. The RAF bombed and machine-gunned at will.

The CIA and MI6 both aided the bloody 1963 and 1968 coups in Iraq. In 1980, the US government gave Saddam Hussein the green light to attack Iran. Alexander Haig, Reagan's first Secretary of State, wrote in a confidential memo, "It was interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd [Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia]." The USA, Britain and Israel all sold arms to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war, despite a UN Resolution banning sales to either.

Before the 1990 Iraq war, US diplomats lured Hussein into attacking Kuwait, telling him that the USA would not intervene. In that war, USAF and RAF bombing of unparalleled intensity destroyed Iraq's civilian infrastructure. Thatcher and Bush, who had sold Saddam Hussein his chemical and biological weapons, then accused the war's opponents of supporting him!

After the war, US-British sanctions throughout the 1990s killed a million Iraqi people, half of them children, making Iraq's child mortality the worst in the world. Bush, when asked if sanctions would cover food and medicine, replied, `everything, everything'. It is a war crime to starve a civilian population.

The current US-British occupation of Iraq is a disaster. A 2003 US National Intelligence Estimate stated that the insurgency was fuelled by local conditions and drew its strength from real grievances, including the presence of US troops and bases. A century of outside interference has not brought peace, democracy or prosperity to Iraq, just one catastrophe after another.

After reading this book, you'll discover that Bush isn't the only idiot when it comes to the current Iraq situation. In fact the idiocy of today goes way way back. It's a fasinating history and make you realize that our leaders don't read history because they foolishly repeat it. In the case of W, it makes you wonder what the hell he thought he was going to do once he got there. Makes you appreciate George W's policy of not going to Bagdad during the Gulf war, though he screwed up too. And Clinton! Don't even get me started... Buy the book, read the book, it's very very good.

Lando begins by telling us that numerous world leaders have contributed to the mess in Iraq, beginning with its illogical formation after WWI. However, most "Web of Deceit" focuses on the actions of Bush I and Bush II, particularly the former. Readers sense that both Gulf War I and II, as well as the War on Terror could have been avoided through better decision-making.

Saddam (as a CIA "asset") and the U.S. joined forces first in the overthrow of a nationalistic Iraq government that had the audacity to threaten a Kuwait takeover (long-standing border dispute) and actually nationalized Iraqi oil production and marketing. This was followed by Saddam's involvement in the first of numerous mass executions implicitly sanctioned by the U.S. - this one because it was getting rid of pro-Soviet Iraqis.

The U.S. then backed a Baath Party takeover in return for reversing sulfur-mining concessions Iraq had granted French companies. We also supported Kurds' anti-government actions. The French, West Germans, and Italians then provided Iraq with extensive and sophisticated arms, as well as two reactors and training. When Saddam invaded Iran, Presidents Carter and Reagan supported him with arms as a means of undermining Khomeini. These included cluster bomblets, some with delayed timing to maim and kill rescuers. The U.S. also ignored Saddam's use of chemical weapons vs. Iran's human wave attacks, and may have been involved in their production. Iraqi troops also received unconventional warfare training in the U.S. in case Iran overran Iraq, and considerable intelligence from U.S. spy satellites. (Iran also received arms, at least partly in an unsuccessful effort to obtain the release of hostages, and also because eg. Kissinger hoped both sides would destroy each other.)

Bush I was down in the polls ("No new taxes" reversal) when Saddam grossly miscalculated reactions and invaded Kuwait. After initially responding with mixed messages, Bush decided this was an opportunity to take out Saddam - despite our earlier support. The U.S. mislead Saudi Arabia as to the extent and progress of Iraq's buildup on the Saudi's borders as a means of obtaining their approval to stage 15,000 troops, as well as obtaining a broad coalition of support. (Similarly, Kuwait's P.R. firm massively mislead Congress and U.S. citizens with untrue stories of abuse by Iraqi troops.) Tens of billions in aid and debt forgiveness was doled out to help convince those undecided, and in one case aid was cut to a non-supporter - Yemen. Bush then rebuffed Saddam's face-saving offers to withdraw - eg. in return for a U.S. supported conference on the Palestine issue. Bush then proceeded with his "altruistic" mission, though to some our charges of aggression rang hollow vs. Panama, and Israel vs. Lebanon; similarly, our mission to enforce a U.N. resolution on the issue seemed two-faced to many, in light of our non-support for U.N. resolutions vs. Israel.

Lacking post-war plans (the U.S. was worried about fracturing the coalition) led to allowing Saddam use of his "civilian" helicopters to massacre Shiites in the South and Kurds in the North after Bush had urged them to revolt. Only after it became known that some of the helicopters were being used in chemical weapons attacks were the "No-Fly" zones established - much later.

In Lando's opinion, the most lethal "WMD" to hit Iraq did not occur until the U.S./Britain sponsored U.N. Iraq trade embargo. Since the country imported 70% of its pre-war food, had had its electrical power generation largely destroyed by U.S. air attacks (intended to created civilian anti-Saddam pressure), as well as water-purification and sewage-treatment plants rendered inoperable, the result was a perverse type of biological warfare that killed 500,000- 1,000,000, mostly children. Exceptions were made to allow for medical and other emergency supplies, but these were mostly window-dressing as the bulk of resulting funds were directed to reparations to Kuwait and paying U.N. overhead.

The embargo's intent was to topple Saddam - experts estimated he would only last six months. Later the focus shifted to finding and destroying Saddam's WMD programs. This effort, however, was undermined by the U.S. planting spies within the inspection group, and creating artificial crises from time to time.

9/11 ultimately led to the end of Saddam. Bush II had a hatred of Saddam ("He tried to kill my dad"), surrounded himself largely with neo-cons focused on deposing Saddam, and took advantage of the situation to manipulate information into an anti-Saddam frenzy.

Lando's "Web of Deceit" is a great service to those interested in the truth. It reveals that most U.S. actions in the area were counterproductive - especially the long-term stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia that became a major irritant to Muslim extremists.

Over 85 years of deceitful policies and relationships spin us around and around into complicated webs of destruction. Lando is the devil charging every sinner with his or her full measure of sin. Across every page is stamped GUILTY. The final judgment is necessary: Iraq II --or is it III? or IV?-- was a repeat in so many ways. Let's learn something this time around; and not forget.

The history is presently succinctly by Lando. He never gets bogged down, maintaining a tone of objectivity throughout, leaving room for readers to reach their own conclusions, but never allowing for excuses or cover.

My conclusions may differ from yours: All superpowers are essentially weak. We are pathetically dependent, driven, unaware, bumbly, and inadequate to the challenges of the world. The more power we think we have, the deeper the holes we dig.

Believe it or not, I felt a bit sorry for the Western leaders, caught in the webs of their own half-conscious power plays. There is a sense of Karma to all the actions and failures to act. No one wins.

This is primarily a story of relationship to a character (Saddam Hussein) who like the devil reveals the worst sides of all other characters. Did we create him? Or did he create us? And finally it's about our failure to relate to a country and its peoples.

Barry Lando's "The Web of Deceit" along with "Fiasco: the American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas Ricks are required reading about our "efforts" in Iraq. Ricks' focus is on how irresponsible use of money and resources ends in incompetence and failure. In some ways Ricks makes Lando look gentle and overly timid in his charges because he has information Lando doesn't about the occupation.

Iraqis and Middle Easterners remember this history. It's theirs. We walk away and think we don't need to know it. But as Lando makes clear this is inextricably our history too. No escape. No denial.

Excellent easy to follow history of the complex gerrymandering of the cradle of civilization.