Details
Synopsis
History seemed to repeat itself in 2004 when Seymour M. Hersh, writing for the New Yorker, broke the shocking story of widespread human rights violations by American troops in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. In 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam,for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. CHAIN OF COMMAND is based on Hersh's post-9/11 reporting, including pieces on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Iraq War (and particularly Abu Ghraib), which together comprise some of the best reportage available. Here is Hersh on Pakistan President Musharraf's tenuous hold on power and on the Saudi government's duplicitous behavior toward the US. Hersh's insightful portraits of key players in the Bush administration include Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle, who threatened to sue Hersh for reporting on a business lunch Perle conducted with Saudi businessmen while he was serving in an official government capacity. Hersh connects the dots and follows them up the chain of command, placing responsibility and culpability for the Iraq troubles squarely in the lap of President George W. Bush. Hersh's deeply sourced and trenchant analyses make CHAIN OF COMMAND an outstanding work in current events. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.
| Size | | Length: | 392 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 24.8 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "In the late summer of 2002, a Central Intelligence Agency analyst made a quiet visit to the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where an estimated six hundred prisoners were being held, many, at first, in steel-mesh cages that provided little protection from the brutally hot sun."
Industry Reviews
"Necessary reading for anyone remotely interested in what went wrong and continues to go wrong in Iraq....The outrage that stokes Mr. Hersh's writing...seems less like ideological or partisan outrage than an old-fashioned muckraker's outrage, fueled by the disparity he sees between the reality described by senior-level officials and spinmeisters, and the reality on the ground as observed by soldiers, low-level bureaucrats, operational experts and by the reporter himself."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (09/28/2004)
"CHAIN OF COMMAND is the best book we are likely to have, this close to events, about why the United States went from leading an international coalition, united in horror at the attacks of 9/11 to fighting alone in Iraq and, in Abu Ghraib to violating the very human rights it has said it had come to restore....This book reminds us why tough, skeptical journalism matters so much: it helps to keep us free."
New York Times Book Review - Michael Ignatieff (10/17/2004)
"[P]rovides a clear-eyed and sweeping survey of the terrain of American policy and the dispositions and activities of its makers."
Nation - Lisa Hajjar (02/07/2005)
"[An] indispensable guide to the politics of American security after 9/11...."
London Review of Books - Corey Robin (05/19/2005)
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