The road to hell

Perhaps the most morally shocking revelation in "The Assassins' Gate" is that the real reason the Bush administration did not plan for the aftermath of the war was that such planning might have prevented the war from taking place. One example of this was the administration's rejection of an offer of help from a coalition of heavyweight bipartisan policy groups. Leslie Gelb, president of the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations, had offered to assist the administration in its postwar planning: He proposed that his group and two other respected think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, prepare a study. "'This is just what we need," Rice said. 'We'll be too busy to do it ourselves.' But she didn't want the involvement of Heritage, which had been critical of the idea of an Iraq war. 'Do AEI instead.'"

Representatives of the think tanks duly met with National Security Council head Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley. "John Hamre of CSIS went in expecting to pitch the idea to Rice, but the meeting was odd from the start: Rice seemed attentive only to [AEI president Chris] DeMuth, and it was as if the White House was trying to sell something to the American Enterprise Institute rather than the other way around. When Gelb, on speakerphone from New York, began to describe his concept, DeMuth cut him off. 'Wait a minute. What's all this planning and thinking about postwar Iraq?' He turned to Rice. 'This is nation building, and you said you were against that. In the campaign you said it, the president has said it. Does he know you're doing this? Does Karl Rove know?'

"Without AEI, Rice couldn't sign on. Two weeks later, Hadley called Gelb to tell him what Gelb already knew: 'We're not going to go ahead with it.' Gelb later explained, 'They thought all those things would get in the way of going to war.'"

In effect, the far-right AEI was running the White House's Iraq policy -- and the AEI's war-at-all-costs imperatives drove the Pentagon, too. "'The senior leadership of the Pentagon was very worried about the realities of the postconflict phase being known,' a Defense official said, 'because if you are Feith or you are Wolfowitz, your primary concern is to achieve the war.'"

Those involved in this massive deception have not been punished in any way. The officials who lied to get their war will never pay any price for their deeds. But one could make a legitimate argument that their actions constitute one of the greatest betrayals of the nation in its history.

If "The Assassins' Gate" achieved nothing more than exposing this grotesque low point in the history of American governance, it would have earned an honored place in the accounts of this catastrophic war. But it does much more. Packer's reporting from Iraq is also exceptional -- varied, empathetic and intelligent. He provides an insider's account of the crucial mistakes -- the disbanding of the Iraqi army, de-Baathification, the failure to provide security and restore services -- that helped doom the occupation. He reveals the appalling cluelessness of the American officials in the Green Zone, almost completely cut off from the deteriorating realities outside. He focuses on several admirable Americans, including a straight-talking Army captain named John Prior, whose efforts to help the Iraqi people are heartbreakingly undermined by the incompetence of their leaders and by the intractable problems of a nation emerging from decades of dictatorship. His chapter about Chris Frosheiser, the anguished father of a young American killed in Iraq, with whom Packer established a personal relationship and who desperately wanted to find out if his son died for something worthwhile, is one of the most moving pieces of journalism to come out of the war.

Packer's portraits of individual Iraqis, and his assessment of the Iraqi people as a whole, are also compelling. He never forgets that wars and the big ideas behind them always come down, in the end, to the fate of individual human beings. Above all, he is on the side of the Iraqis. He introduces us to an appealing young woman named Aseel, a computer programmer who supports the invasion and whose dreams of a better life "become one index for me of the status of America's vision for Iraq." And he does not shy away from reporting on the many Iraqis who turned against the Americans almost immediately. Like all other observers, he points out that the Americans' failure to restore order, prevent anarchy and provide services played a key role in the Iraqi disillusionment with the United States.

But Packer's attempt to explain why the Iraqis did not welcome their "liberators" (the word deserves to be put in quotes not because the Americans did not free Iraqis from Saddam, but because the reality that followed was so hideous) still bears some traces of the hawkish illusions that led him to support the war. He cites one Iraqi's belief that his countrymen, ground down by years of dictatorship, "lack the power to experience freedom." And he closes a chapter, tellingly titled "Psychological Demolition," with a similar quote from an exile: "'Never afraid of Saddam -- beaten by the mentality of the Iraqi people.'"

There is, of course, considerable truth in this explanation for the Iraqi anger at the United States. But Packer fails to adequately grasp other, perhaps more important, reasons -- which are laid out in Anthony Shadid's "Night Draws Near." As Shadid reports, the main reason many if not most Iraqis opposed the U.S. war was national pride and a deep sense of honor, combined with a profound distrust of the West engendered by British colonial rule and smoldering anger at America for its near-total support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. Getting rid of Saddam, even if the aftermath of the invasion had gone better, would not have made these attitudes go away.

And there is, of course, another reason the Iraqis were angry at the U.S.: the war itself. Packer reports on incidents in which innocent Iraqis are killed by jittery G.I.'s, and includes a harrowing scene of a nasty, possibly sadistic young pretty-boy soldier taunting some terrified captives. He also grasps the full import of Abu Ghraib, and, to his credit, assigns ultimate responsibility for that national disgrace to the Bush administration. Yet unlike Shadid, he does not delve into the full horror of war. Shadid tells the stories of innocent Iraqi boys torn apart by American bullets; of families huddled in terror in Baghdad before the invasion, waiting for the bombs to fall; of families shattered, homes wrecked, the innumerable hideous events that always happen during and after war.

Packer is aware of those horrors, but they are not part of his central narrative. He remains invested in the idea of a good war, a liberating war, and averse to the "familiar postures" of the left, whose "softer, more cautious worldview ... often amounted in practice to isolationism." Even at the end of his book, Packer remains unrepentant about his support for the war.

Next Page: When did George Packer change his mind about Iraq?

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