The serial mistruths, mistakes and misperceptions about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged support for Al Qaeda are laid out in devastating detail in Robert Draper’s authoritative new book ... This is well-trod history, but Draper mines newly declassified documents and tracks down previously unavailable CIA and Defense officials to flesh out the sordid story of the run-up to the March 2003 invasion, the start of a grinding conflict that would last eight years and claim nearly 4,500 American lives ... Draper has written a compelling narrative of just how calamitous an ideology-first approach to fact-finding can be in the White House, and why Americans were so badly deluded ... Draper has written the most comprehensive account yet of that smoldering wreck of foreign policy, one that haunts us today.

Draper carefully examines the Bush administration’s illusions about Iraq ... Draper has performed prodigious research, including conducting interviews with several hundred former national security officials and scrutinizing recently declassified government documents. He does not provide any bold revelations, but offers the most comprehensive account of the administration’s road to war, underscoring that Bush was indeed The Decider when it came to Iraq — there was never any debate about not overthrowing Hussein ... Some of Draper’s most revealing passages focus on the intense pressure that Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, as well as the Defense Department official Douglas J. Feith, exerted on the intelligence agencies to buttress and even concoct the case that Saddam had intimate ties with Al Qaeda and that he possessed weapons of mass destruction ... If Draper expertly dissects the ferocious turf battles that took place within the administration over the war, he does not really seek to set it in a wider context other than to note rather benignly that 'the story I aim to tell is very much a human narrative of patriotic men and women who, in the wake of a nightmare, pursued that most elusive of dreams: finding peace through war.' But there was more to it than that ... Draper provides a timely reminder of the dangers of embarking upon wars that can imperil America itself.

... the detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq is essential reading—now, especially now ... it’s complex and multilayered ... That makes Draper’s account one for the ages, one to study not just to understand a war whose repercussions loom large given the Americans, Iraqis and others who’ve perished—and given the through-line from Bush’s decision to the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq and the persistent threat from terrorists there and in Syria in the wake of the U.S. invasion ... The lessons that emerge from Draper’s book for any American president are profound, making it a must-read for all who care about presidential power.

Draper obliquely acknowledges that subsequent events have conspired to make the whole Bush family look better in retrospect, and although this is certainly true - George W. Bush being a stubborn dimwit but not a free-associating sociopathic monster - it can’t possibly save this book from old and not-so-old angers, as Draper must know better than anybody ... Wolfowitz figures on almost every page of To Start a War, and although Draper is far too wise an old fox to lapse into ventriloquism - at the end of the book, it is still eminently possible to loathe Wolfowitz - there’s an inevitable coloring of the familiar narrative ... Draper is a consistently vivid writer, employing throughout a pugnacious journalistic tone that can at times leave bruises ... Draper’s narrative brings it all back as vividly as any book has done in over a decade. This is a layered, multi-faceted account of a diplomatic, political, and military disaster, a veritable tornado of violence and murder that fed on outrage and national pain in order to reshape the world, clumsily and contradictorily. There’s no sane way to ease the Iraq War into sense or respectability, and Draper doesn’t try. But the quiet, balanced gravity he brings to the whole subject does indeed, miraculously, serve to lower the temperature on the subject a bit ... At the center of the story is George W. Bush, and his portrait in these pages is the most likely barometer of how close that balanced gravity ever comes to the thin-gruel whitewashing that is the heart of ‘time heals all wounds' ... an even-handed historical assessment of a chapter in US history that even now resists even-handed treatment. It’s an important book, and important contribution to the understanding of that chapter, and the fact that it’s unlikely to satisfy completely every passionate partisan news-watcher from a decade ago is probably it’s greatest strength.

... compelling and richly documented ... Draper’s exhaustive research includes interviews with key figures such as Powell, Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice, as well as dozens of others from the CIA and the State and Defense Departments. He also makes extensive use of recently released documents to give a vivid picture of how events unfolded ... As we continue to live through the ripple effects of this momentous decision in American foreign policy, Draper’s revelatory account deserves a wide readership.

In To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq, Robert Draper, a writer-at-large for the New York Times draws on a mountain of government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with hundreds of key players to provide an authoritative account of one of the most catastrophic decisions in recent American history.

... authoritative ... Draper is at his best when describing the most prominent advocates for war to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein ... Although exhaustive details might discourage general audiences, informed readers and foreign policy specialists will be engaged in what is likely the definitive contemporary account of the origins of the War in Iraq.

... caustic and engrossing ... Though the outlines of this story are familiar, Draper’s psychological insights, well-crafted narrative, and colorful details spotlight the human complexity behind this tragic episode. The history of the Iraq War has rarely been told with so much authority and precision.

.. authoritative ... The author, who ably distills his deep research and reporting into a fluid narrative, is not the first to focus on Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and a veteran adviser since the Reagan administration ... An evenhanded chronicler, Draper reminds readers that most Americans, most congressmen, and even the New York Times supported invasion ... A painful yet gripping, essential account of a disastrous series of decisions.