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Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

By Barry M. Lando

BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt)

BuzzFlash Recommendation: If you read one book on the historic involvement of the U.S. and Britain in using Iraq as a petroleum pawn and staging point for Mideast military activity, this is the book to read. It starts in 1914, which was the beginning of the British occupation of what would become a nation hobbled together to meet Western interests of preserving control over the oil reserves -- and holding onto to a regional base of power. That is the tradition that continues to this day.

No U.S. or British government wants democracy in Iraq, just the appearance of democracy. What Britain wanted in the early part of the last century -- and Bush and Britain want now is what they have always wanted and nurtured in Iraq: a puppet government.

Why was Saddam hanged before he was tried on other charges? Because he was the man who knew too much.

“Fascinating. A stunning case of victor’s justice. Barry Lando’s Web of Deceit is a compelling must-read that goes far beyond the current crop of books on Iraq. Lando uses his investigative skills to dig into the sordid history of western relations with Iraq, not just since 9/11, but over the past 85 years. The book follows an appalling trail of western cynicism, betrayal, and deceit since the country was founded. It is an indictment of western leaders from Winston Churchill to Jacques Chirac, to every American president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. If you want to understand Iraq, this is the book.

—Mike Wallace, Correspondent 60 Minutes


How the U.S. came to invade Iraq and how that invasion became the great debacle of U.S. foreign policy has been told again and again. Lando tells a different story — how the U.S. helped make Saddam the tyrant he was and how the U.S. helped him win the war he started against Iran and how the U.S. helped keep him in power. You will be convinced that the U.S. was complicit in Saddam’s crimes.

—Marvin Zonis, Professor Graduate School of Business The University of Chicago and author, Majestic Failure, The Fall of the Shah


From the Pubisher [edited]:

An investigative history of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes reveals the story his trial never disclosed.

In February 1991, the Shia of southern Iraq rose against Saddam Hussein. Barry M. Lando, a former investigative producer for 60 Minutes, argues compellingly that this ill-fated uprising represents one instance among many of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity.

The Shia were responding to the call for rebellion from President George H.W. Bush that was broadcast repeatedly across Iraq by clandestine CIA stations. But, just as the revolution was on the brink of success, the United States and its allies turned their backs: U.S. troops destroyed huge weapons caches to prevent them from falling into rebel hands and blocked rebels trying to reach Baghdad. In the end, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, were massacred.

Because of restrictions imposed by the Special Tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein, the extensive role of the U.S. and its allies in his crimes were never explored at his trial. But as Web of Deceit demonstrates, the nations that denounced Saddam most prominently secretly backed the dictator from his rise to power in the 1960s and '70s to his offensives in Iran and, despite warnings, took no action to stop his invasion of Kuwait. They also turned their backs when he used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and persisted in international sanctions long after they had proved ineffective and, for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, lethal.

Web of Deceit draws on a wide range of journalism and scholarship to present a complete picture of what really happened in Iraq under Saddam, detailing--for the first time--the complicity of the West in its full and alarming extent.

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Other Reviews

Barry Lando’s Web of Deceit is a splendid, gripping, documented, dispassionate, and badly-needed investigative account of western relations with Iraq,leading up to Saddam Hussein and the two American wars with Iraq, describing the blunders, deceits, betrayals and bad faith on all sides that contributed to bringing those wars on, creating the catastrophe that now has happened and is certain to haunt the United States for years to come. Lando does an immense public service with this book.

— William Pfaff, Veteran Columnist on Foreign Affairs International Herald Tribune

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