I was peripherally aware of the now infamous Sixteen Words in George W. Bush's 2003 State of The Union address and the role that Valerie Plame and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, played in the scandal created by those sixteen words, but it wasn't until I read Hubris, by Isikoff (Newsweek) and Corn (The Nation), that I understood the extent to which the diseased mentality of the Bush Administration drove the White House's vengeful exposing of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. Though Hubris only tells one side of this difficult and complex story, Isikoff and Corn, together, paint a convincing portrait of a White House set on war in Iraq and how earnestness to avenge 9-11 lead to abuses, not only of the Constitution in the form of the Patriot Act, but of the dubious intelligence used to convince Congress to fund conflict in Iraq in 2003.
Even if readers ideologically disagree with the case put forth in Hubris, they must agree that the work makes two powerful arguments about human nature and its affect on politics and power. Firstly, the more powerful governments are, the more willing they are to use their power to destroy people who disagree with them. This is exemplified by the case of Plame whose career was sabotaged after her husband, a former US ambassador criticized the White House in a New York Times Op Ed. And secondly, the desires of presidents and their administrations are perfectly obvious to the agencies that support them. If a president wants a reason to go to war, those agencies will find a reason, if not by committing fraud then certainly by distorting the findings of science and intelligence to fit the needs of their bosses. This yes men culture is a pernicious force, especially when it is married to an administration willing to go to war over unfinished business. (4/5 Stars)
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