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Ranger176 t1_jd84v8p wrote

To mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, I have several recommendations.

  1. Slate Slow Burn podcast on Iraq. This is a decent, nuanced history on the road to the invasion, more than I expected from Slate, honestly. Unfortunately, the last two episodes are behind a paywall so this will be a partial recommendation.

  2. The Regime Change Consensus by Joseph Stieb: Think of this as a more academic version of the Slate podcast, specifically episodes four and five which dealt with liberal support for the invasion. This book places the Iraq War in the context of the 1990s in the wake of the Gulf War and the Soviet collapse, showing that the political conditions for regime change were set well before 9/11.

  3. A Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper: I haven’t started this one yet but it tells the story of the surprisingly intimate relationship between Saddam Hussein and his American jailers in the months leading up to his execution. The author was on NPR a few years ago talking about it.

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