The Assassins Gate

by George Packer

THE ASSASSINS' GATE: AMERICA IN IRAQ recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerilla war in Iraq.

The Assassins Gate

Author: George Packer

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

ISBN: 9780374705329

Page: 480

View: 575

THE ASSASSINS' GATE: AMERICA IN IRAQ recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's War on Terror policy and led America to the Assassins' Gate—the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The consequences of that policy are shown in the author's brilliant reporting on the ground in Iraq, where he made four tours on assignment for The New Yorker. We see up close the struggles of American soldiers and civilians and Iraqis from all backgrounds, thrown together by a war that followed none of the preconceived scripts. The Assassins' Gate also describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer's first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.

Summary The Assassins Gate

by BusinessNews Publishing

BOOK ABSTRACT In The Assassin's Gate, George Packer investigates exactly
how U.S. policy led to American's invasion of Iraq and then seeks to understand
how we have become involved in a protracted occupation and guerilla war. He
first ...

Summary The Assassins Gate

Author: BusinessNews Publishing

Publisher: Primento

ISBN: 2511001810

Page: 44

View: 582

The must-read summary of George Packer's book: “The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq”. This complete summary of "The Assassins' Gate" by George Packer, a renowned American journalist, presents his explanation of the creation of the Bush administration's war policy and how this led to America's invasion of Iraq. He explains how the US became ensnared in a guerrilla war and the impacts this had at home too, from the grief of the families of fallen soldiers to the bitterly polarized political culture of America. Added-value of this summary: • Save time • Understand the Iraq War, its motivations and its implications • Expand your knowledge of American politics and policy To learn more, read "The Assassins' Gate" and discover what ultimately led the Bush administration into the Iraq War.

Obama and the Middle East

by Fawaz A. Gerges

George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2005); Charles Krauthammer, “The Axis of Petulance,” Washington
Post, 1 March 2002; William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Bombing Iraq Isn't
Enough ...

Obama and the Middle East

Author: Fawaz A. Gerges

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

ISBN: 1137000163

Page: 304

View: 536

A hard-hitting assessment of Obama's current foreign policy and a sweeping look at the future of the Middle East The 2011 Arab Spring upended the status quo in the Middle East and poses new challenges for the United States. Here, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's top Middle East scholars, delivers a full picture of US relations with the region. He reaches back to the post-World War II era to explain the issues that have challenged the Obama administration and examines the president's responses, from his negotiations with Israel and Palestine to his drawdown from Afghanistan and withdrawal from Iraq. Evaluating the president's engagement with the Arab Spring, his decision to order the death of Osama bin Laden, his intervention in Libya, his relations with Iran, and other key policy matters, Gerges highlights what must change in order to improve US outcomes in the region. Gerges' conclusion is sobering: the United States is near the end of its moment in the Middle East. The cynically realist policy it has employed since World War II-continued by the Obama administration--is at the root of current bitterness and mistrust, and it is time to remake American foreign policy.

Tchaikovsky 19 A Diplomatic Life Behind the Iron Curtain

by Robert F. Ober, Jr.

580 George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. 184. 581 Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the
Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), p. 194.

Tchaikovsky 19 A Diplomatic Life Behind the Iron Curtain

Author: Robert F. Ober, Jr.

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

ISBN: 145351791X

Page: 482

View: 631

"Readers will discover the failures of Kissinger ́s policy of detente in the early 1970s, the mistaken departure from Carter ́s balanced policy toward China and the USSR, and the near-collapse of the embassy due to intelligence failures"-Foreign Service Journal. "Ober ́s book recounts it all, along with the personalities and events of the time now mostly forgotten: dissidents and refuseniks, Victor and Jennifer Louis, Nina and Ed Stevens, U.S.-Soviet summits, microwaves, bugged buildings and typewriters, fires, spy dust and spy mania . . . It ́s all there, the pageant of U.S. Embassy Moscow 1970-90, a place so unlike today ́s walled air-conditioned, high-rise embassy fortress a block away as to beggar the imagination."-Richard Gilbert, AmericanDiplomacy.org "You have wonderfully captured the way things were in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and ́80s. I don ́t know anyone who has done it better."-Donald Connery, former Time-Life correspondent, Moscow. "Together with much wisdom about American diplomacy, this rich memoir provides keen insight into Russian thinking and behavior"-George Feifer, "The Girl from Petrovka".

The Assassins of Rome

by Caroline Lawrence

You can hire a litter just inside the city gates.' 'Thanks,' said Flavia, and gratefully
allowed Caudex to lift her off the back of the cart. She pulled her damp tunic away
from her back, then stretched and looked around. The road was lined with ...

The Assassins of Rome

Author: Caroline Lawrence

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 1444003542

Page: 224

View: 405

Jonathan goes on a secret quest to Rome, and Flavia, Nubia and Lupus set out to find him. Their dangerous mission takes them to the Golden House of Nero where a deadly assassin is rumoured to be at work - and they learn what happened to Jonathan's family during the terrible destruction of Jerusalem nine years earlier.

Road to Iraq

by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

... the House of Bush; Packer, The Assassins' Gate; Kaplan, Daydream Believers;
Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal; Lieven, America Right or Wrong; Bamford, A
Pretext for War; Mann, Rise of the Vulcans; Halper and Clarke, America Alone.

Road to Iraq

Author: Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

ISBN: 074869305X

Page: 256

View: 614

Ahmad presents a social history of the war's leading agents "e; the neoconservatives "e; and shows how this ideologically coherent group of determined political agents used the contingency of 9/11 to overwhelm a sceptical foreign policy establishment, milit

Intelligence and U S Foreign Policy

by Paul R. Pillar

George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2005), 36. Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound:
The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution ...

Intelligence and U S Foreign Policy

Author: Paul R. Pillar

Publisher: Columbia University Press

ISBN: 0231527802

Page: 416

View: 128

A career of nearly three decades with the CIA and the National Intelligence Council showed Paul R. Pillar that intelligence reforms, especially measures enacted since 9/11, can be deeply misguided. They often miss the sources that underwrite failed policy and misperceive our ability to read outside influences. They also misconceive the intelligence-policy relationship and promote changes that weaken intelligence-gathering operations. In this book, Pillar confronts the intelligence myths Americans have come to rely on to explain national tragedies, including the belief that intelligence drives major national security decisions and can be fixed to avoid future failures. Pillar believes these assumptions waste critical resources and create harmful policies, diverting attention away from smarter reform, and they keep Americans from recognizing the limits of obtainable knowledge. Pillar revisits U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and highlights the small role intelligence played in those decisions, and he demonstrates the negligible effect that America's most notorious intelligence failures had on U.S. policy and interests. He then reviews in detail the events of 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, condemning the 9/11 commission and the George W. Bush administration for their portrayals of the role of intelligence. Pillar offers an original approach to better informing U.S. policy, which involves insulating intelligence management from politicization and reducing the politically appointed layer in the executive branch to combat slanted perceptions of foreign threats. Pillar concludes with principles for adapting foreign policy to inevitable uncertainties.

Creating Enemies

by David Mattingly

4 (Winter 2013-2014): 119-23, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/
Parameters/issues/Winter_2013/12_Benson.pdf (accessed May 16, 2014). 206
Packer, The Assassins' Gate, 120. Packer states the directive was drafted by ...

Creating Enemies

Author: David Mattingly

Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing

ISBN: 3954899744

Page: 129

View: 419

The Bush administration planned the invasion of Iraq to be a quick “in and out” operation without dedicating a large force for the invasion and the aftermath. The “honeymoon period” immediately after the invasion closed and the insurgency movement emerged and grew when the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the army and banned the Ba’ath Party and most of its members from participating in the new government. The results of the orders created an insurgency war that the U.S. and Coalition forces had not planned to fight. The war created numerous domestic and foreign insurgency groups and militias as well as a largely under-governed area in Western Iraq on the Syrian border. The Syrian Civil War drew a number of groups into the country to fight along the pro-Shi`a and pro-Sunni factions. The insurgency war born in the aftermath of the invasion has created regional instability and conflict. The war has also crippled the U.S. in reacting to other global conflicts at a time when Russia is increasing its involvement in world affairs.

Time of the Assassins

by Hugh Holton

He pulled his black Mercedes up to the gate set in a cyclone fence, which
surrounded the whitepainted Barksdale Manufacturing Company building
located in the 7300 block of South Chicago Avenue. The fence was electrically
charged, and ...

Time of the Assassins

Author: Hugh Holton

Publisher: Forge Books

ISBN: 1466826681

Page: 384

View: 424

Hugh Holton, the highest-ranking active police officer writing books today, is well-known for powerful, passion-charged novels. Reviewers compare his books to hurricanes and firestorms, descriptions that are especially apt in the case of Time of the Assassins. The most controversial story in today's inner cities is the CIA's apparent funding of counterinsurgent druglords in Latin America, who, instead of fighting revolutionaries, have used that funding to wholesale crack cocaine in this country's ghettos. In this exciting new novel, Commander Larry Cole battles these Agency-funded druglords. Their "personal representative" is Baron von Rianocek, a hitman. A well-paid professional, known as a world-class "problem solver," he has successfully eliminated both high-profile British industrialists and South American dictators. The CIA, the FBI, and Interpol, all suspect him of being behind various incidents, but they have never been able to pin anything on the slippery millionaire, who claims to be descended from European royalty. Police detective Larry Cole has unwittingly crossed paths several times with the notorious assassin. Appearing at the wrong place at the wrong time, he had twice foiled the assassin's work. Now the well-heeled assassin has a new target. He has set his telescopic sights on the CPD chief of detectives-Cole himself. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Presidents and Their Generals

by Matthew Moten

... “U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on FY 2004 Defense
Authorization,” transcript, February 25, 2003; Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 102,
notes 522–523; George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York:
Farrar, ...

Presidents and Their Generals

Author: Matthew Moten

Publisher: Harvard University Press

ISBN: 0674745329

Page: 455

View: 786

Since 1945, as the U.S. has engaged in near-constant “wars of choice” with limited congressional oversight, the executive and armed services have shared primary responsibility for often ill-defined objectives, strategies, and benefits. Matthew Moten shows the significance of negotiations between presidents and the generals allied with them.

Sergio

by Samantha Power

George Packer, The Assassins' Gate:America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 2006), p. 130. UNESCO estimates that some 150,000 objects were lost or
stolen. Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, U.S. Department of ...

Sergio

Author: Samantha Power

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 1101195797

Page: 640

View: 961

In this perfect match of author and subject, Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power tackles the life of Sergio Vieira de Mello, whose work for the U.N. before his 2003 death in Iraq was emblematic of moral struggle on the global stage. Power has drawn on a staggering breadth of research (including 400 interviews) to show us a heroic figure and the conflicts he waded into, from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to the slaughter in Bosnia to the war-torn Middle East. The result is a peerless portrait of humanity and pragmatism, as well as a history of our convulsive age.

Alamut the Assassins Nest

by M. Shokouhi N.

At that moment, he heard the front gate open, and Khajeh entered the courtyard.
Alidoost was happy to see that Khajeh had recovered and looked well. Khajeh for
the second time thanked Alidoost for his bravery and heroism that he had ...

Alamut the Assassins Nest

Author: M. Shokouhi N.

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

ISBN: 1493190113

Page: 314

View: 839

The book is a novel, love story of ages. It is inter-mixed with politics of cultists-terrorists and history, of the 11th century, during Seljuk dynasty of the Persian Empire. The fire of love between the hero (Alidoost) and the heroine (Golnar) of our story, flaming. However, due to a death in the bridegrooms family, postpones the traditional deflowering wedding nights ritual. Moreover, during a tumultuous political conspiracy, innocently, our hero accused of murdering his own childhood and beloved friend. Alidoost is imprisoned, and waiting to be head, or put him away for the rest of his life time. Families devastated, and fall apart. There are dangerous and high ranking nemesis to be revenged, find his lost love Golnar, and revive the rest of his family, if he freed . . . . .

Known and Unknown

by Donald Rumsfeld

4. James Dobbins, Seth G. Jones, Benjamin Runkle, and Siddharth Mohandas,
Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority (RAND, 2009), p.
249. 5. George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, ...

Known and Unknown

Author: Donald Rumsfeld

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 1101522534

Page: 832

View: 170

Visit www.rumsfeld.com for more. Discover Known and Unknown Deluxe offering an unprecedented reading experience for a memoir by a major public figure. For web-connected readers, it features more than 500 links to never-before-available original documents from Donald Rumsfeld's extensive personal archive. It includes State Department cables, correspondence, and memoranda on topics such as Vietnam, Watergate, the days following 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much more. Available in ePub and Adobe Reader. Like Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown pulls no punches. With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Rumsfeld's memoir is filled with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also features Rumsfeld's unique and often surprising observations on eight decades of history: his experiences growing up during the Depression and World War II, his time as a Naval aviator; his service in Congress starting at age 30; his cabinet level positions in the Nixon and Ford White Houses; his assignments in the Reagan administration; and his years as a successful business executive in the private sector. Rumsfeld addresses the challenges and controversies of his illustrious career, from the unseating of the entrenched House Republican leader in 1965, to helping the Ford administration steer the country away from Watergate and Vietnam, to bruising battles over transforming the military for the 21st century, to the war in Iraq, to confronting abuse at Abu Ghraib and allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay. Along the way, he offers his plainspoken, first-hand views and often humorous and surprising anecdotes about some of the world's best known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Saddam Hussein, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, from Elvis Presley to Dick Cheney, and each American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Rumsfeld relies not only on his memory but also on previously unreleased and recently declassified documents. Thousands of pages of documents not yet seen by the public will be made available on an accompanying website. Known and Unknown delivers both a fascinating narrative for today's readers and an unprecedented resource for tomorrow's historians. Proceeds from the sales of Known and Unknown will go to the veterans charities supported by the Rumsfeld Foundation.

Standard Operating Procedure

by Errol Morris

Considered, emotive and intelligent, file it alongside George Packer's The
Assassins' Gate asthe second greatworkof the Iraq war' Time Out 'Excellent . . . a
beautifully written, clear, eloquent book. Standard Operating Procedure isan
important, ...

Standard Operating Procedure

Author: Errol Morris

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

ISBN: 0330503499

Page: 304

View: 782

Standard Operating Procedure is an utterly original collaboration by the writer Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families) and the film-maker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War). They have produced the first full reckoning of what actually happened at Abu Ghraib. Standard Operating Procedure reveals the stories of the American soldiers who took and appeared in the haunting digital snapshots from Abu Ghraib prison that shocked the world – and simultaneously illuminates and alters forever our understanding of those images and the events they depict. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris’s startlingly frank and intimate interviews with Americans who served at Abu Ghraib and with some of their Iraqi prisoners, as well as on his own research, Philip Gourevitch has written a relentlessly surprising account of Iraq’s occupation from the inside-out – rendering vivid portraits of guards and prisoners ensnared in an appalling breakdown of command authority and moral order. Gourevitch and Morris have crafted a nonfiction morality play that stands to endure as essential reading long after the current war in Iraq passes from the headlines. By taking us deep into the voices and characters of the men and women who lived the horror of Abu Ghraib, the authors force us, whatever our politics, to re-examine the pat explanations in which we have been offered – or sought – refuge, and to see afresh this watershed episode. Instead of a ‘few bad apples’, we are confronted with disturbingly ordinary young American men and women who have been dropped into something out of Dante’s Inferno. This is a book that makes you think, and makes you see – an essential contribution from two of our finest nonfiction artists working at the peak of their powers.

Exit Strategies and State Building

by Richard Caplan

George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux, 2005), 98, 113–120. 15. “U.S. Casualties in Iraq,” Global Security,
available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm, ...

Exit Strategies and State Building

Author: Richard Caplan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 0199942706

Page: 352

View: 196

In the past two decades, states and multilateral organizations have devoted considerable resources toward efforts to stabilize peace and rebuild war-torn societies in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. Despite these prodigious efforts, there has been relatively little consideration of the critical questions arising from the "end game" of state-building operations. In Exit Strategies and State Building, sixteen leading scholars and practitioners focus on relevant historical and contemporary cases of exit to provide a comprehensive overview of this crucial issue. By examining the major challenges associated with the conclusion of international state-building operations and the requirements for the maintenance of peace in the period following exit, this book provides unique perspective on a critical aspect of military and political intervention. Deftly researched, Exit Strategies and State Building sheds new light on what is not merely an academic issue, but also a pressing global policy concern.

Heads in the Sand

by Matthew Yglesias

11 Years later, in his celebrated history of how the Iraq War went sour, The
Assassins' Gate, Packer was still giving prewar invasion opponents short shrift,
citing the online political organizers behind MoveOn.org as the only exemplars of
 ...

Heads in the Sand

Author: Matthew Yglesias

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 047008622X

Page: 251

View: 214

Describes the perceived flaws in current Democratic foreign policy, where liberal internationalism is overshadowed by aggressive nationalism initiated by the Republican party.

The Insurgents

by Fred Kaplan

—GEORGE PACKER, author of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq “Fred
Kaplan is one of the best in the business, a top-notch journalist and military
analyst with serious intellectual chops and a killer pen. His new book, The
Insurgents, tells ...

The Insurgents

Author: Fred Kaplan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 1451642636

Page: 418

View: 525

Presents the inside story of a small group of soldier-scholars, led by General David Petraeus, who determined to revolutionize the United States military and reshape twenty-first-century military policy.

Reconstructing Iraq s Budgetary Institutions

by James D. Savage

See, for example, George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, chapter 4; Anne Ellen Henderson, “The
Coalition Provisional Authority's Experience with Economic Reconstruction in
Iraq: ...

Reconstructing Iraq s Budgetary Institutions

Author: James D. Savage

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 1107471028

Page: 336

View: 306

Consistent with the literature on state building, failed states, peacekeeping and foreign assistance, this book argues that budgeting is a core state activity necessary for the operation of a functional government. Employing a historical institutionalist approach, this book first explores the Ottoman, British and Ba'athist origins of Iraq's budgetary institutions. The book next examines American pre-war planning, the Coalition Provisional Authority's rule-making and budgeting following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the mixed success of the Coalition's capacity-building programs initiated throughout the occupation. This book sheds light on the problem of 'outsiders' building states, contributes to a more comprehensive evaluation of the Coalition in Iraq, addresses the question of why Iraqis took ownership of some Coalition-generated institutions, and helps explain the nature of institutional change.

Fuel on the Fire

by Greg Muttitt

Gordon Rudd, CPA historian, interview with Meghan O'Sullivan, December 29,
2003, obtained through FOIA; George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in
Iraq (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), 124. 18. Meghan O'Sullivan, “Iraq: Time
for ...

Fuel on the Fire

Author: Greg Muttitt

Publisher: New Press, The

ISBN: 1595588221

Page: 432

View: 824

The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave? Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals the heretofore-untold story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Drawing upon hundreds of unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with senior American, British, and Iraqi officials, Muttitt exposes the plans and preparations that were in place to shape policies in favor of American and British energy interests. We follow him through a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, reneged promises, and abuses of power; we also see how Iraqis struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of their dysfunctional government and rising levels of violence. Through their stories, we begin to see a very different Iraq from the one our politicians have told us about. In light of the Arab revolutions, the war in Libya, and renewed threats against Iran, Fuel on the Fire provides a vital guide to the lessons from Iraq and of the global consequences of America’s persistent oil addiction.