'A superb analysis of how and why a small band of neoconservatives helped push the United States into a disastrous war. Far from being tough-minded patriots, Ahmad reveals them to be deceitful and manipulative self-promoters who remain influential in policy-making circles, despite the enormous cost of their past follies. His analysis is nuanced, his research comprehensive, and the story he tells is profoundlydisturbing.'
Stephen Walt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

'This is by far the clearest, most incisive, most comprehensive account I've seen of something very like a coup inside the US foreign policy process and the commentariat during the George W. Bush era. Is it not somehow comforting that the transparency
of digital-age media can reveal the folly in American ''thinking'' to a studious scholar abroad and, in this fascinating book, even to Americans?'
Christopher Lydon, Radio Open Source, radioopensource.org

A rigorous investigation into the socio-political milieu that produced the Iraq war

The Iraq war - its causes, agency and execution - has been shrouded in an ideological mist. This book is an attempt to dispel the myths surrounding the Iraq war, taking a sociological approach to establish the causes, identify its agents and describe how it was
sold. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad presents a social history of the war's leading agents - the neoconservatives - and shows how this ideologically coherent group of determined political agents used the contingency of 9/11 to overwhelm a sceptical foreign policy
establishment, military brass and intelligence apparatus and propelled the US into a war that a significant part of the public opposed. The book includes a historical exploration of American militarism and of the increased post-World War II US role in the Middle East,
as well as a reconsideration of the debates that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt sparked after the publication of The Israel lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a Lecturer in Journalism at the University for the Creative Arts. His articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The National, Guernica, Le Monde Diplomatique and the London Review of Books blog, among other publications, and he has appeared as a political analyst on the BBC and Al Jazeera and on various international radio channels.

Cover image: US 15th Marine Expeditionary manned M1 A © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Cover design: hayesdesign.co.uk

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Black Gold and Red Herrings; 2. Origins and Interests; 3. Ideology and Institutions; 4. Setting the Agenda; 5. Selling the War; Conclusions; Appendix: Mearsheimer and Walt, Redux.