Wanting War

"With his usual crystalline prose and piercing analysis, Jeffrey Record penetrates to the heart of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, laying stark all of the flawed assumptions and logic. He demonstrates that the Iraq War has important antecedents in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The book is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of American national security policy."Steven Metz, author of Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy Powerfully argued and utterly persuasive, Wanting War offers the best account yet of the folly and miscalculation that resulted in America's heedless plunge into Iraq. In crisp, devastating prose, Jeffrey Record exposes the incoherence of the arguments offered to justify this unjustifiable and unnecessary war.Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism Why did Bush do it? The question Jeffrey Record tackles in this book is one of the most important of our time. You will learn much from reading this book, even if you don't agree with all his answers.Thomas E. Ricks, author of FIASCO and The Gamble and senior fellow, the Center for a New American Security Record's book is the first work on this subject to move beyond the blame game to set the decision for war in a broader historical context.Antulio J. Echevarria II, director of research, U.S. Army War College Record has produced an excellent interpretive analysis of the rationale for the George W. Bush administrations invasion of Iraq.Joint Force Quarterly

Jeffrey Record is a professor of strategy at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of Bounding the Global War on Terrorism (2004), Dark Victory: Americas Second War against Iraq(2004), and Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win (Potomac Books, Inc., 2007). He served in Vietnam as a pacification adviser and received his doctorate from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He lives in Atlanta.