Synopses & Reviews
In War and Decision, former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith puts readers in the room with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others as they considered how to prevent another 9/11. Drawing on thousands of previously undisclosed written sources, Feith offers the first inside view of these events as they unfolded. Through vivid narrative, frank analysis, and elegant writing, his account forever changes our understanding of this challenging era.
Review
“One would have expected, as in the case of all the other Iraq exposés, that [Feith] would use the memoir genre to get even. Instead, he is selfcritical, even admits to occasional hubris, but, more importantly, also chronicles the contortions and reinventions of many post2003/4 critics of the war.” Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online
Review
“Extraordinarily frank and persuasive. . . . [O]ur first in-depth look at the inside of the Bush administrations national security top leadership from one who was there. [Feith] has been criticized harshly and, I think, unfairly.” Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report
Review
“Extraordinary. . . . I was unprepared for the thoroughness of the documentation, the sweeping nature of the narrative and the highly readable prose. It is the first attempt by a serious student of history to lay out the myriad, challenging choices confronting a president. . . . Splendid.” Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Washington Times
Review
“If you want to read a serious book about the origins and consequences of the intervention in Iraq in 2003, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy of Douglas Feiths War and Decision.” Christopher Hitchens, Slate
Review
“Indispensable. . . . The best account to date of how the administration debated, decided, organized and executed its military responses to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Much of what makes War and Decision so compelling is that it is, in effect, a revisionist history.” Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal
Review
“Whats needed now? More memoirs, more data, more information, more testimony. More serious books, like Doug Feiths. More ‘this is what I saw and ‘this is what is true. Feed history.” Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
Review
“As Americans turned on the Iraq war, anti-war forces tried to portray the war as not only a mistake, but the result of a neoconservative coup. . . . In his new memoir, War and Decision, Mr. Feith does an admirable job in dispelling this hokum.” Eli Lake, New York Sun
Review
“By far the most balanced, detailed, and lucid account of this story thats come out yet. . . . Feith makes the first intellectually serious attempt to explain how the government tried to answer that question [of settling post-9/11 defense strategy] in the years after 9/11.” & #8220;The Corner, & #8221; National Review Online
Review
“Meticulous. . . . A convincing refutation of unfair allegations about the author [and] a balanced analysis of policy debates about Iraq inside the administration. . . . Will be studied for years by journalists, historians and aspiring political appointees.” National Review
About the Author
Douglas J. Feith served as U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2001 to 2005. He is the Director of the Center for National Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute and a Belfer Center Adjunct Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his family.