A History of Iraq
Author: Charles Tripp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date:August 2007
Summary:
To understand Iraq, Charles Tripp’s history is the book to read. Since its first appearance in 2000, it has become a classic in the field of Middle East studies, read and admired by students, soldiers, policymakers and journalists. The book is now updated to include the recent American invasion, the fall and capture of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent descent into civil strife. What is clear is that much that has happened since 2003 was foreshadowed in the account found in this book. Tripp’s thesis is that the history of Iraq throughout the twentieth-century has made it what it is today, but also provides alternative futures.
Unless this is properly understood, many of the themes explored in this book - patron-client relations, organized violence, sectarian, ethnic and tribal difference - will continue to exert a hold over the future of Iraq as they did over its past. Book Description To understand Iraq, Charles Tripp’s history is the book to read. The updated book includes the recent American invasion, the fall of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent descent into civil strife. Tripp argues that the history of Iraq throughout the twentieth century has shaped where it is today.
ISBN:0521878233
Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture Program
Author: Stephen Grey
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: September 2007
Summary:
On June 10th, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the US had captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to explode a “dirty bomb” on American soil. That alleged terrorist was José Padilla who was finally charged in 2005 with conspiracy to murder. What Ashcroft didn’t talk about was how information against him was obtained – by the relentless torture of one man— Binyam Mohamed, in the name of the United States. Arrested at Karachi Airport before Padilla’s arrest on April 10, 2002, Mohamed was put on a luxury executive jet and flown to an interrogation center in Morocco. For over 18 months, he was subjected to one torture after another: Beating followed beating and, then, his guards produced razor blades and began to split the skin all over his body, including on his genitals. Since 1997, hundreds of people, many of whom have no ties to terrorist organizations, have been abducted from foreign airports or street corners on suspicions based at times on the flimsiest of evidence courtesy of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
In Ghost Plane, Stephen Grey tells the true story of the CIA’s torture program known by the euphemism “extraordinary rendition” and the airplanes that make the program run. Begun during the Clinton administration, but taking a decidedly more voracious turn after 9/11, the rendition system has seen the transfer of more than 1000 prisoners into jails stretching from Guantanamo to Syria, from Kabul to Bangkok and beyond. Grey had access to the thousands of CIA flight records and has interviewed dozens of sources from the most senior levels of the National Security Council to the CIA. In Ghost Plane, he paints a disturbing picture of the War on Terror that reaches to the highest levels of power in Washington, D.C. and exposes the extreme ethical corruption at the heart of this US government program, a program finally acknowledged by President George Bush in September 2006, undertaken in the name of the citizens of the United States..
ISBN:B002ECEUSU
