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Of the many books on Iraq, this one is receiving laudatory and extensive coverage because it is written by a key insider in the formation of the post-invastion "Iraqi Government," Ali A. Allawi. What makes it noteworthy is that he blames the Busheviks for the disaster that followed the infamous "mission accomplished" proclamation by Bush.

Published by Yale University Press on April 7, "The Occupation of Iraq" has heightened credibility because it is a detailed (544 pages) account of the Iraq disaster from someone who saw the Bushevik failures -- up close -- as they unfolded.

From an Iraqi who wanted Saddam overthrown, this is a damning indictment of how the Bush Administration screwed up Iraq royally.

It's not about "supporting our troops," it's about sacrificing our GIs to save Bush and Cheney from ignominy. But that infamy, they have already achieved. And unless they remain in power to rewrite history Stalin style, we will look back at books like Allawi's and wonder how these arrogant, incompetent, cynical and corrupt people ever ruled America.

From Publishers Weekly:

Allawi, until recently a senior minister in the Iraqi government, provides an insider's account of the nascent Iraqi government following the American invasion. His scholarly yet immensely readable exposition of Iraqi society and politics will likely become the standard reference on post-9/11 Iraq. It convincingly blasts the Coalition Provisional Authority for failing to understand the simmering sectarian animosity and conflicting loyalties that led Iraq into chaos. Beginning during Saddam's reign, among the motley gang of liberal democrats, Islamists and Kurdish nationalists that formed the opposition-in-exile, of which Allawi was a prominent member, he chronicles the fortunes and aspirations of the political parties, personalities and interest groups that now are tearing Iraq apart. In one representative episode, after the siege of Fallujah in 2004, the Marines initiated an ill-fated attempt to create a Fallujah Brigade of local men who would be loyal to the CPA. "[Head of the CPA L. Paul] Bremer... learned about it from newspaper reports.... The defense minister [Allawi himself] went on television, denouncing the Fallujah Brigade.... The 'Fallujah Brigade,' after a few weeks of apparent cooperation with the Marines, began to act as the core of a national liberation army. Any pretense that they were rooting out insurgents was dropped."

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) � In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation�s �shocking� mismanagement of his country � a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had �turned their backs on their would-be liberators.�

�The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order,� Ali A. Allawi concludes in �The Occupation of Iraq,� newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that �new order,� having served as Iraq�s trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

It�s an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word �ignorance� crops up repeatedly.

First came the �monumental ignorance� of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without �the faintest idea� of Iraq�s realities. �More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society,� he writes.





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