The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity - Softcover

Wilson, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786715510 ISBN 13: 9780786715510

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2005

Synopsis

The Politics of Truth A former career diplomat who has served through the last three presidential administrations and two wars with Iraq offers an eye- opening account of the Bush administration's falsification of intelligence reports prior to the 2003 war in Iraq and the repercussions of his determination to reveal the truth about the. Full description

About this title

Review:

While many former Bush administration officials published books airing their gripes and concerns in advance of the 2004 election, few got as personal as Joseph Wilson's The Politics of Truth. A career diplomat, Wilson found himself working for an administration that apparently leaked information revealing his wife, Valerie Plame, to be a CIA operative soon after Wilson cast doubt on Bush's claims of Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger. When columnist Robert Novak named Plame, there was widespread speculation about who leaked the information. In The Politics of Truth, Wilson points a finger at Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff I Lewis (Scooter) Libby and national security aide Eliot Abrams although Wilson never really presents smoking gun evidence against them. There is little here that breaks new ground in terms of hard facts being revealed. Nonetheless, Wilson's account, personal and well written, maps out the human impact of the situation in ways that major newspapers never could.

Wilson's animus toward the administration is made stronger by his support of the president in the 2000 election and he held out hope that a centrist conservative approach would help America's position in the world. That scenario withered, in Wilson's mind, when the plan to invade Iraq became increasingly inevitable and, like many traditional conservatives, Wilson mourns the rise of the ideological "neo-conservatives" who shaped foreign policy. But while a true-life secret identity/betrayal story is inherently fascinating, and Wilson's indignation and scorn is powerfully delivered, there is more to recommend his book. Wilson tells of being stationed in the Persian Gulf in the days leading up to the first Gulf War, a haunting encounter with Saddam Hussein, and years of efforts to establish democracy in Africa. The Politics of Truth provides a glimpse inside the high-stakes world of international intelligence and, Joseph Wilson says, that world can be vicious. --John Moe, Amazon.com

Book Description:

One of last year's most controversial books and a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, with an investigative epilogue by a prominent Washington journalist and a new introduction by the author on the anatomy of the Bush administration's smear campaign against him

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0786715510
• ISBN 13: 9780786715510
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 609