Book Review

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Notes

1. One important difference that gets virtually no mention, however, is the role of oil. Whereas the U.S. stake in Vietnam—as many of the authors note—was primarily a matter of “credibility” and a “test-case,” the U.S. stake in Iraq involves these considerations as well as one of the largest oil reserves in the world and strategic location in the center of global oil production. It's hard to imagine that the United States would have been as determined to invade Iraq had it not been for these factors.

2. Ryan quotes from Rumsfeld's memo. Emphasis added. For the excerpted text, see “In Rumsfeld's Words: Guidelines for Committing Forces,” New York Times, 14Oc-tober 2002, A9.

3. Recall that the Democrats narrowly controlled the Senate from 6 June 2001 to 12 November 2002. See http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm (accessed 3 July 2007).

4. See, for example, James Gordon Meek, “Hillary Diplomatically Mum on Prez's Failure at the UN,” Daily News (New York), 20 March 2003, 8. In addition, Clinton voted against Carl Levin's amendment that would have required the president to return to the Congress for a new resolution in the event that the UN Security Council failed to pass a war authorization (see Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., “Hillary's War,” New York Times Magazine, 3 June 2007, 43), as did John Edwards (roll call vote 235, 107th Congress, 2nd session).

5. It is sometimes claimed that policy-makers in both cases were not lying because they actually believed what they said. But officials in both cases stated that the facts were clear-cut and unambiguous, when in fact they knew that not to be the case. Claiming certainty when uncertainty exists is lying.

6. “Washington Post -ABC News Poll: Bush's Speech,” 18 March 2003, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/stories/data031803. htm (accessed 2 July 2007).

7. “Bush and Iraq,” 11 March 2003, available at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/ html/politics/20030311_poll/20030311poll_results.html (accessed 2 July 2007). This survey also found that almost two-thirds of respondents thought the administration wasn’t telling people all they needed to know and 61 percent thought the Bush administration should take into account the views of antiwar protesters (14 percent a lot, 47 percent some).

8. Dumbrell (211) points out that the Iraq war had already in 2006 matched the cost of the Korean war, converting the latter to 2006 dollars. But, of course, the Korean war represented a much larger share of national income than does the Iraq war. See Lori Montgomery, “The Cost of War, Unnoticed: Why Iraq and Afghanistan Haven’t Squeezed the Average American's Wallet,” Washington Post, 8 May 2007, D1.

9. Ryan quotes a National Security Council aide informing Kissinger in 1970 that “no analysis has ever been provided to show that the logic of Vietnamization has proven correct” (127).

10. Ricks (2006) is another who thinks that the problem in Iraq has been inadequate use of counterinsurgency doctrine.

11. See, for example, Scahill 2007 and Pelton 2007.

12. See Porter and Roberts 1988: 303–10. See also Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl D. Jackson, “Research among Vietnam Refugees Reveals a Blood Bath,” Wall Street Journal, 22 April 1985, 29; Desbarats and Jackson 1985: 169–82. Jackson soon went on to become deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia in the Reagan administration, special assistant to the president and senior director for Asia at the National Security Council, 1989–91, and national security advisor to the vice president of the United States from 1991 to 1993.