BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

It's hard to squeeze a laugh out of the Iraq War, but this droll book does. And it's done at the expense of the Bush/Neo-Con "experts" who predicted a lightning-quick war and flowers to greet our GIs.

The authors wryly claim to be trained in "expertology": exposing the failed predictions of so-called "experts." It's all very tongue in cheek, and you end up laughing through your tears.

Many of the quotations are familiar to BuzzFlash readers, but it is the annotatations and illustrations that provide the context for their absurdity. This may be the most definitive collection yet of Bush/Neo-Con failed predictions and tortured language -- and informative afternotes in each section undercut the ludicrous, wrong predictions of the Neo-cons with documented facts.

Bush keeps swaggering on, as he did in the Israeli Knesset, even after he's been proven a total incompetent who has nothing to back up his bluster but failed predictions and empty threats.

And he's got a whole right wing echo chamber full of people who excel at being flat out wrong -- and never pay a price for their failure.

"All the golden oldies are here, from the title of the book itself to Rumsfeld's "freedom is untidy" to Kenneth Adelman's prediction that the war would be a "walk in the park" to Cheney and McCain's prediction that the Iraqis would greet us as "liberators." Readers may wish to do Sudoku puzzles instead of wallowing in memories of Ari Fleischer and WMDs. But readers who opt for Mission Accomplished may find that it pins them to their, um, seats."

-- Salon.com

"Having amassed an aircraft carrier's worth of lies about the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky can now crow Mission Accomplished!. Indeed."

-- Vanity Fair

"Almost 25 years after the amusing The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation, Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf have compiled its successor, Mission Accomplished! The new book, nicely illustrated by satirist Robert Grossman, hangs authorities of all vocations and ideological stripes with their words about slam dunks, cakewalks, willing coalitions, the war's cost, Jessica Lynch, Blackwater and much more."

-- Washington Post Express

"Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf's shrewd, lucid and tragically funny compilation of 'experts' offering their (erroneous, comically misguided, and even outright false) thoughts on the Iraq war...is sure to become one of the essential reads for those trying to remember how the Iraq fiasco came to be."

--Huffington Post

You can throw away all those piles of articles and notes documenting the Bush circus of disaster regarding Iraq. All you need is this pithy book of quotations and evidence of the clowns at the helm of this nation for seven years.

Easy to read, fun, and heartbreaking. How's that for a combo deal.

Never has so much fecklessness and ineptitude been given so much power.

From MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

-- President George W. Bush, May 2, 2003

"[Insurgents] pose no strategic threat to the United States or to the Coalition Forces."

-- L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, November 17, 2003

"Military action will not last more than a week."

-- Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, January 23, 2003

"I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah."

-- President George W. Bush, at a White House menorah lighting ceremony, December 10, 2001


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS