Even now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few are not haunted by it.
New York Times contributor and author Robert Draper talked to most of the key officials involved to revisit their roles, among them Powell, Armitage, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, Tenet, Bremer, Fleischer; he interviewed dozens who worked in the Departments of State, Defense, the National Security Council and the intelligence community, as well reporters who fumbled or challenged the story at the time.
The result is his new book, "To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq," is a psychologically complex and page-turning account: it includes a set of obsessed actors who gamed the process relentlessly as well as a group of patriotic men and women who, in the wake of the nightmare of 9/11, pursued that most elusive of dreams: finding peace through war.
