Terrorism, War, or Disease?: Unraveling the Use of Biological Weapons

by Anne Clunan (Editor), Peter Lavoy (Editor), Susan Martin (Editor)

From the publisher:
The use of biological warfare (BW) agents by states or terrorists is one of the world's most frightening security threats but, thus far, little attention has been devoted to understanding how to improve policies and procedures to identify and attribute BW events. Terrorism, War, or Disease? is the first book to examine the complex political, military, legal, and scientific challenges involved in determining when BW have been used and who has used them.

Through detailed analysis of the most significant and controversial allegations of BW use from the Second World War to the present, internationally recognized experts assess past attempts at attribution of unusual biological events and draw lessons to improve our ability to counter these deadly silent killers. This volume presents the most comprehensive analysis of actual and alleged BW use, and provides an up-to-date evaluation of law enforcement, forensic epidemiology, and arms control measures available to policymakers to investigate and attribute suspected attacks.

"This book offers flashes of insight over the dark terrain of bioterrorism. A real contribution." —Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy 1998-2001

Terrorism and Homeland Security: Thinking Strategically About Policy

by Paul Viotti (Editor), Michael Opheim (Editor), Nicholas Bowen (Editor)

From the publisher
Despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been active since November of 2002, the American homeland is still not secure from terrorist attack. What passes as DHS strategy is often just a list of objectives with vague references to the garnering of national resources, and the marshalling of support from other nations.

Drawing on the expertise of several of the nation's leading reseachers and policy experts, Terrorism and Homeland Security: Thinking Strategically About Policy provides policymakers with a much needed starting point for the creation of an effective coherent national security strategy. Its origins pre-dating 9-11, this volume grew out of an extensive project featuring the participation of various institutions including the Army War College.

The primary goal: develop a strategy that optimizes security with minimal infringement on rights and liberties.

After addressing points salient to a central strategy, the book then identifies the domestic and external elements that need to be addressed in building such a strategy. To this end, it examines the nature of terrorist threats, looks at challenges specific to various weapons of mass destruction, and then goes beyond terrorism to discuss safeguarding society and its infrastructure from natural disasters.

In concluding, the editors present a number of preliminary suggestions. It is hoped that policymakers and others may take these suggestions into account when developing a comprehensive national security strategy.

Explosion and Blast-Related Injuries: Effects of Explosion and Blast from Military Operations and Acts of Terrorism

by Nabil M. Elsayed and James L. Atkins

From the publisher:
Explosion and Blast-Related Injuries is an authoritative text that brings together diverse knowledge gained from both the experience of clinicians treating blast casualties and the insights of scientists obtained from research and modeling of blast exposures.

By providing information on explosion and blast injury patterns, as well as the mechanism of blast-induced injuries, it is a useful reference for both physicians and researchers. With contributions by experts from around the globe, the book covers topics such as the epidemiology of blast and explosion injury, pathology and pathophysiology, and the modeling and mechanism of injury. Finally, this book might stimulate additional studies into ways to improve our current mass casualty response systems.

* Contains contributions from current and retired military Commanding Officers including the Commanding General of US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the former US Navy Surgeon General, and the Director of the Bureau of Medicine

* Presents practical, real-world tactics and experiences in dealing with explosives and blast injury

* Covers the latest in current issues and hazards encountered by US and world forces in Iraq and Afghanistan

Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent

by Fred Burton

From the publisher:
For decades, Fred Burton, a key figure in international counterterrorism and domestic spycraft, has secretly been on the front lines in the fight to keep Americans safe around the world. Now, in this hard-hitting memoir, Burton emerges from the shadows to reveal who he is, what he has accomplished, and the threats that lurk unseen except by an experienced, world-wise few.

In the mid-eighties, the idea of defending Americans against terrorism was still new. But a trio of suicide bombings in Beirut–including one that killed 241 marines and forced our exit from Lebanon–had changed the mindset and mission of the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), the arm of the State Department that protects U.S. embassy officials across the globe. Burton, a member of DSS’s tiny but elite Counterterrorism Division, was plunged into a murky world of violent religious extremism spanning the streets of Middle Eastern cities and the informant-filled alleys of American slums. From battling Libyan terrorists and their Palestinian surrogates to having facing down hijackers, hostages, and Hezbollah double agents, Burton found himself on the front lines of America’s first campaign against Terror.

In this globe-trotting account of one counterterrorism agent’s life and career, Burton takes us behind the scenes to reveal how the United States tracked Libya-linked master terrorist Abu Nidal; captured Ramzi Yusef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and pursued the assassins of major figures including Yitzhak Rabin, Meir Kahane, and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan–classic cases that have sobering new meaning in the treacherous years since 9/11. Here, too, is Burton’s advice on personal safety for today’s most powerful CEOs, gleaned from his experience at Stratfor, the private firm Barron’s calls “the shadow CIA.”

Told in a no-holds-barred, gripping, nuanced style that illuminates a complex and driven man, Ghost is both a riveting read and an illuminating look into the shadows of the most important struggle of our time.

Fred Burton is one of the world’s foremost experts on security, terrorists, and terrorist organizations. He is vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security at Stratfor, an influential private intelligence company. He is the former deputy chief of the Diplomatic Security Service, the Department of State’s counterterrorism division.

Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror - A Public Defender's Inside Account

by Steven T. Wax

From the publisher:
“OUR GOVERNMENT CAN MAKE YOU DISAPPEAR.”

Those were words Steven T. Wax never imagined he would hear himself say. In his thirty-four years as a lawyer, Wax didn’t have to warn a client that he or she might be taken away to a military brig, or worse, a “black site,” one of our country’s dreaded secret prisons. So how had we come to this? The disappearance of people happens in places ruled by tyrants, military juntas, fascist strongmen–governments with such contempt for the rule of law that they strip their citizens of all rights. But in America?

Under the Bush administration, not only have the civil rights of foreigners been in jeopardy, but also those of U.S. citizens. In Kafka Comes to America, Wax interweaves the stories of two men he represented who were caught up in our government’s post-9/11 counterterrorism measures. Brandon Mayfield, an American-born, small-town lawyer and family man, was arrested as a terrorist suspect in the Madrid train station bombings after a fingerprint was mistakenly traced back to him by the FBI. Adel Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator working in Pakistan, was taken from his apartment and flown in chains to the United States military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for no substantiated reason. Kafka Comes to America reveals where and how our civil liberties have been eroded in favor of a false security, and how each of us can make a difference. If these events could happen to Brandon Mayfield and Adel Hamad, they could happen to anyone. They could happen to you.

Steven T. Wax is in his seventh term as the Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon. A cum laude graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Law School, he was a key part of the Brooklyn, N.Y. District Attorney’s prosecution of David Berkowitz, a.k.a. “Son of Sam.” Wax and his team are representing seven men held as “enemy combatants” in Guantánamo. He has taught at the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, serves as an ethics prosecutor for the Oregon State Bar, and lectures throughout the country.

The Poet of Baghdad: A True Story of Love and Defiance

by Jo Tatchell

From the publisher:
In the winter of 1979 Nabeel Yasin, Iraq's most famous young poet, gathered together a handful of belongings and fled Iraq with his wife and son. Life in Baghdad had become intolerable. Silenced by a series of brutal beatings at the hands of the Ba'ath Party's Secret Police and declared an “enemy of the state,” he faced certain death if he stayed.

Nabeel had grown up in the late 1950s and early '60s in a large and loving family, amid the domestic drama typical of Iraq's new middle class, with his mother Sabria working as a seamstress to send all of her seven children to college. As his story unfolds, Nabeel meets his future wife and finds his poetic voice while he is a student. But Saddam's rise to power ushers in a new era of repression, imprisonment and betrayal from which few families will escape intact. In this new climate of intimidation and random violence Iraqis live in fear and silence; yet Nabeel’s mother tells him “It is your duty to write.” His poetry, a blend of myth and history, attacks the regime determined to silence him. As Nabeel’s fame and influence as a poet grows, he is forced into hiding when the Party begins to dismantle the city’s infrastructure and impose power cuts and food rationing. Two of his brothers are already in prison and a third is used as a human minesweeper on the frontline of the Iran-Iraq war. After six months in hiding, Nabeel escapes with his wife and young son to Beirut, Paris, Prague, Budapest, and finally England.

Written by Jo Tatchell, a journalist who has spent many years in the Middle East and who is a close friend of Nabeel Yasin’s, this is the gripping story of a family and its fateful encounter with history. From a warm, lighthearted look at the Yasin family before the Saddam dictatorship, to the tale of Nabeel’s persecution and daring flight, and the suspense-filled account of his family’s rebellion against Saddam's regime, Nabeel's Song is an intimate, illuminating, deeply human chronicle of a country and a culture devastated by political repression and war.

Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11

by Lynn Spencer

From the publisher:
On the azure blue morning of 9/11 the skies were pronounced "severe clear," in the parlance of airline pilots; a gorgeous day for flying. Nearly 5,000 flights were cruising the skies over America when FAA Operations Manager Ben Sliney arrived at the Command Center for his first day on that job. He could never have anticipated the historic drama that was about to unfold as Americans who found themselves on the front lines of a totally unprecedented attack on our homeland sprang into action to defend our country and save lives.

In this gripping moment-to-moment narrative, based on groundbreaking reporting, Lynn Spencer brings the inspiring true drama of their unflinching and heroic response vividly to life for the first time, taking us right inside the airliner cockpits and control towers, the fighter jets and the military battle cabs. She makes vital corrections to the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report, and reveals many startling, utterly unknown elements of the story.

As a commercial pilot herself, for whom the attacks hit terribly close to home, she knew that the true scope and nature of the response so brilliantly improvised that morning by those in the thick of the action -- with so little guidance from those at the highest levels -- had not at all been captured by the news coverage or the 9/11 Commission. To get to the truth, she went on a three-year quest, interviewing hundreds of key players, listening to untold hours of tapes and pouring through voluminous transcripts to re-create each heart-stopping moment as it happened through their eyes and in their words as the drama unfolded.

From the shocking moment at 7:59 a.m. that American 11 fails to respond to a controller's call, until the last commercial flight has safely landed and military jets rule the skies, all Americans will find themselves deeply moved and amazed by the grace and fierce determination of these steely men and women as they draw on all of their exquisite training to grasp, through the fog of war, what is happening, put their lives on the line, and mount an astonishing response.

This beautifully crafted and deeply affecting account of the full story of their courageous actions is a vital addition to the country's understanding of a day that has forever changed our nation.

From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava

by Jay Kopelman and Melinda Roth

From the publisher:
In From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava, Jay Kopelman tells a story that is both tender and thought-provoking--candidly portraying the ugly conditions in wartime Iraq, while also describing his (and his fellow Marines') growing attachment to a scruffy stray puppy.

... a tale of radiant joy about Kopelman's efforts to safely transport Lava, the stray dog his Marine unit found in the wreckage of Fallujah - Publisher's Weekly

From LWBN:
This is the first softcover edition of a previously released hardback.

Ghosts: Marine Snipers in Iraq

by Charles W. Henderson

From the publisher:
In the chaos of the combat zone, there are the living, the dead, and the Ghosts.

In the ongoing Iraq conflict, there are no battle lines, no direct offensives, no ground won or lost-just the daily fight against an enemy who hits and runs, hides and sneaks. If the enemy shows himself, it's only for a moment. But for a Marine Sniper, that is all that is needed.

Readers now have the opportunity, from these warriors' perspective to peer into the killing zone through a telescopic lens, down the barrel of a high-powered rifle, and into the very heart of the enemy. The training, the techniques, and the steel will necessary to survive as a sniper are all described in vivid detail.

Charles Henderson also delves into the core of the enemy--the maniacal ideology, and the tactics that have sown so much violence in Iraq--and how they are all vulnerable to a single bullet from a Ghost.

Charles W. Henderson is a veteran of more than 23 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, with a distinguished career spanning from Vietnam to the Gulf War, after which he retired as a Chief Warrant Officer.

War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq

by Richard Engel

From the publisher:
In the most dramatic and intimate account of battle reporting since Michael Herr's classic Dispatches, NBC News's award-winning Middle East Bureau Chief, Richard Engel, offers an unvarnished and often emotional account of five years in Iraq. Engel is the longest serving broadcaster in Iraq and the only American television reporter to cover the country continuously before, during, and after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Fluent in Arabic, he has had unrivaled access to U.S. military commanders, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iraqi families, and even President George W. Bush, who called him to the White House for a private briefing. He has witnessed nearly every major milestone in this long war.

War Journal describes what it was like to go into the hole where U.S. Special Operations Forces captured Saddam Hussein. Engel was there as the insurgency began and watched the spread of Iranian influence over Shiite religious cities and the Iraqi government. He watched as Iraqis voted in their first election. He was in the courtroom when Saddam was sentenced to death and interviewed General David Petraeus about the surge. In vivid, sometimes painful detail, Engel tracks the successes and setbacks of the war. He describes searching, with U.S troops, for a missing soldier in the dangerous Sunni city of Ramadi; surviving kidnapping attempts, IED attacks, hotel bombings, and ambushes; and even the smell of cakes in a bakery attacked by sectarian gangs and strewn with bodies of the executed.

War Journal describes a sectarian war that American leaders were late to understand and struggled to contain. It is an account of the author's experiences, insights, bittersweet reflections, and moments from his private video diary itself the subject of a highly acclaimed documentary on MSNBC. War Journal is the story of the transformation of a young journalist who moved to the Middle East with $2,000 and a belief that the region would be the story of his generation into a seasoned reporter who has at times believed that he would die covering the war. It is about American soldiers, ordinary Iraqis, and especially a few brave individuals on his team who continually risked their lives to make his own daring reporting possible.

Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians

by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian

From the publisher:
Best-selling author and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and journalist Laila al-Arian spent several months interviewing Iraqi war veterans to expose the patterns of the occupation and how it affects Iraqi civilians. The testimonies of these soldiers and Marines provide a disturbing window into the indiscriminate killing of unarmed and innocent Iraqis that is carried out daily by the occupation forces.

Collateral Damage is organized around key military operations on the battlefield — Convoys, Checkpoints, Detentions, Raids, Suppressive Fire, and “Hearts and Minds.” Hedges and Al-Arian uncover how the very conduct of the war and occupation have turned the American forces into agents of terror for most Iraqis. The military convoys that speed through the centers of towns, often driving on the wrong side of the street or on sidewalks, have become trains of death. Soldiers fire upon Iraqi vehicles with impunity at checkpoints; pregnant women being rushed to hospital have been killed at roadblocks when their husbands failed to slow down and children have watched in horror as their parents have been killed.

Hedges and Al-Arian show how this widespread pattern of civilian killing has fueled the insurgency in Iraq, giving rise to instability, sectarian violence, and total chaos.

Chris Hedges has been a foreign correspondent for fifteen years. He joined the staff of The New York Times in 1990 and previously worked for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and National Public Radio. He lives in New York City.

Faith- Based Diplomacy Trumping Realpolitik

by Douglas Johnston

From the publisher:
For most of the twentieth century, the most critical concerns of national security have been balance-of-power politics and the global arms race. The religious conflicts of this era and the motives behind them, however, demand a radical break with this tradition. If the United States is to prevail in its long-term contest with extremist Islam, it will need to re-examine old assumptions, expand the scope of its thinking to include religion and other "irrational" factors, and be willing to depart from past practice. A purely military response in reaction to such attacks will simply not suffice. What will be required is a long-term strategy of cultural engagement, backed by a deeper understanding of how others view the world and what is important to them.

In non-Western cultures, religion is a primary motivation for political actions. Historically dismissed by Western policymakers as a divisive influence, religion in fact has significant potential for overcoming the obstacles that lead to paralysis and stalemate. The incorporation of religion as part of the solution to such problems is as simple as it is profound. It is long overdue.

This book looks at five intractable conflicts and explores the possibility of drawing on religion as a force for peace. It builds upon the insights of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (OUP, 1994) -- which examined the role that religious or spiritual factors can play in preventing or resolving conflict -- while achieving social change based on justice and reconciliation. The world-class authors writing in this volume suggest how the peacemaking tenets of five major world religions can be strategically applied in ongoing conflicts in which those religions are involved. Finally, the commonalities and differences between these religions are examined with an eye toward further applications in peacemaking and conflict resolution.

Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past

by Lloyd C. Gardner (Editor), Marilyn B. Young (Editor)

From the publisher:
With countless lives lost and the situation in Iraq more desperate than ever, it is clear that U.S. foreign policy makers have learned little from the past, even as they have been obsessed with the "Vietnam syndrome." Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam explores this conundrum.

In Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam, Lloyd C. Gardner, author of several celebrated books about U.S. foreign policy and Vietnam, and Marilyn B. Young, author of the leading history of the Vietnam War, have brought together the most renowned historians of Vietnam—and leading analysts of contemporary U.S. foreign policy—to consider the correspondences between then and now. By closely examining how our policy makers have failed to understand the history of our wars, relations with allies and antagonists, military strategies and capabilities, and the nature and limitations of presidential and American power, these writers demonstrate that Rumsfeld had it right when he noted that "the biggest problem we've got in the country is people who don't study history anymore." As Howard Zinn notes, "Iraq is not Vietnam, the makers of war tell us, hoping we will forget. The writers in this volume insist that we remember, and, in these thoughtful, sobering essays, they explain why. It is history at its best—meaning, at its most useful."
With contributions by: Christian G. Appy • Andrew J. Bacevich • Alex Danchev • David Elliott • Elizabeth L. Hillman • Gabriel Kolko • Walter LaFeber • Wilfried Mausbach • Alfred W. McCoy • Gareth Porter • John Prados

Lloyd C. Gardner is Research Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author of more than a dozen books, including Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam. He lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Marilyn B. Young is a professor of history at New York University and the author of numerous books, including The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990. She lives in New York City.

In the House of My Bibi: Growing Up in Revolutionary Iran

by Nastaran Kherad

From the publisher:
This is a powerful memoir of a girlhood spent during the upheaval of the Iranian Revolution. From early childhood, Nastaran chronicles vivid recollections of her imprisonment at age 18 on trumped-up political charges. During her brutal incarceration in the women’s cell block of Adelabad Prison in the city of Shiraz, in southern Iran, she was tortured and made to live in harsh over-crowded conditions. Many of the people imprisoned at Adelabad were innocent victims of tyranny, and this included Nastaran’s brother, Mohammed, 24 years old, who was on death row for his political views and his belief in a free and just society. The Ayatollah Khomeini’s secret police executed tens of thousands of young university students and schoolchildren in a sweeping attempt to destroy all signs of modernization and to sever all ties with the West. Nastaran’s narrative is a compelling glimpse into this nightmare world.

Nastaran grew up in Shiraz, a beautiful garden city, under the protection of Bibi, her maternal grandmother. Bibi mesmerized her granddaughter with countless stories, traditional prayers, and simple yet profound wisdom gleaned from a harsh life. At first it was just Nastaran and Bibi in the house, but when Nastaran turned 6 years old, her mother and brothers came to live with them, turning Bibi’s simple home into a microcosm of the clash of cultures that was Iran in the 1970s. Nastaran was torn between the traditional upbringing of a girl her age, and the call of the modern world. She established a special bond with Mohammed, her agate-eyed older brother, who introduced her to the world of ideas, literature, and art. It is the love and nurturing of Bibi and Mohammed that guide Nastaran through her tangled and tumultuous adolescence. This is a dramatic story of struggle and survival, and readers will gain a deeper understanding of a country and its people about which many in the West know very little.

Nastaran Kherad was born in 1964 in Abadan, Iran, near the Persian Gulf. At age two, after her father’s sudden death, she moved to Shiraz to live with her maternal grandmother, Bibi. After fleeing Iran she graduated from California State University, Long Beach. She currently is pursuing a doctorate in Contemporary Persian Studies and Exile Literature at the University of Texas in Austin. This is her first book.

Two Wars: One Hero's Fight on Two Fronts--Abroad and Within

by Nate Self

From the publisher:
For the first time, Army Ranger hero Nate Self tells his story. Self recounts the Roberts Ridge Rescue mission, the ferocious battles in Afghanistan, and the lone war of attrition that Nate Self has waged against post-traumatic stress disorder. This book will become a go-to book for understanding the long-term effects of the war on terror. Thousands of families are fighting this battle, and Nate Self opens up his whole life--tragedies, successes, failures, and a struggle with suicidal thoughts--to share the facts and to show how his family and his faith pulled him through.

War Without End: The Iraq War in Context

by Michael Schwartz

From the publisher:
In this razor-sharp analysis, TomDispatch.com commentator Michael Schwartz turns every mainstream conclusion about Iraq on its head. He shows how US occupation is fueling civil war in Iraq and beyond, and how US officials dismantled the Iraqi state and economy, helping to destroy rather than rebuild the country.

In a popular style reminiscent of the best writing against the Vietnam War, he punctures the myths used to sell the US public the idea of an endless "war on terror" centered in Iraq. Schwartz shows how the real US interests in Iraq were rooted in the geopolitics of oil and the expansion of a neoliberal economic model in the Middle East-and around the globe-at gunpoint.

War Without End also reveals how the failure of the United States in Iraq has forced US planners to fundamentally rethink the imperial dreams driving recent foreign policy.

This book is the third in a series of very successful books published in cooperation with TomDispatch.com, including the New York Times bestseller United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega (Seven Stories Press).

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology and faculty director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on the war in Iraq at websites including TomDispatch, ZNet, Asia Times, and Mother Jones, and in numerous magazines, including Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine.

Hunting bin Laden: How al-Qaeda Is Winning the War on Terror

by Rob Schultheis

From the publisher:
"I first met al-Qaeda before there was an al-Qaeda, way back in the winter of 1984. It was an encounter that came within a split second of costing me my life."

So begins Rob Schultheis's gripping account of his journey into the heart of one of the world's most dangerous places, on the trail of the world's most wanted man. A veteran war correspondent (he was one of a handful of Western journalists who covered the Russian war in Afghanistan from inside the country), Schultheis offers a first-hand look at how the seeds of al-Qaeda were planted by foreign jihadists in the 1980s, before most Americans knew what the word "jihad" meant. He then offers a radical assessment of why bin Laden remains at large, detailing the complicit role Pakistan has played in both offering him sanctuary and in helping al-Qaeda establish an almost impregnable stronghold in the Middle East. Finally, fresh from a recent visit to Afghanistan and armed with analysis of current satellite imagery, Schultheis makes his case for where exactly Osama bin Laden is hiding—and why the U.S. government is not acting on this information.

Rob Schultheis, author of four previous books, including the acclaimed Night Letters: Inside Wartime Afghanistan, has been filing dispatches from Afghanistan for over twenty years. His screenplay credits include Seven Years in Tibet, and his articles have appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and Smithsonian. He lives in Telluride, Colorado.

The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel

by Stephen J. Sniegoski

From the publisher:
Although it is generally understood that American neoconservatives pushed hard for the war in Iraq, this book forcefully argues that the neocons' goal was not the spread of democracy, but the protection of Israel's interests in the Middle East.

Showing that the neocon movement has always identified closely with the interests of Israel's Likudnik right wing, the discussion contends that neocon advice on Iraq was the exact opposite of conventional United States foreign policy, which has always sought to maintain stability in the region to promote the flow of oil.

Various players in the rush to war are assessed according to their motives, including President Bush, Ariel Sharon, members of the foreign-policy establishment, and the American people, who are seen not as having been dragged into war against their will, but as ready after 9/11 for retaliation.

"Sniegoski leaves no stone unturned in exposing the Israeli-neocon alliance and its catastrophic consequences in the Middle East. Timely and important, his book should provoke a much-needed debate about who truly benefits from current US policies in the region." —Jonathan Cook, author, Israel and the Clash of Civilisations

"This is a riveting book." —Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, syndicated columnist; former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; and former associate editor, Wall Street Journal

Homeland Security and Criminal Justice: Five Years After 9/11

by Everette B. Pen

From the publisher:
Previously published as a special issue of Criminal Justice Studies, this volume analyzes the nexus of homeland security to the discipline of criminal justice by addressing in a scholarly manner issues and challenges facing criminal justice students, practitioners, and faculty in the burgeoning field of homeland security.

No event has shaped international events over the last five years more than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Tragically, less than four years later Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Indeed, in less than five years the United States has experienced its worst terrorist attack and worst natural disaster, both in the number of lives lost and in the costs needed for reconstruction. Both events have clearly indicated that there are tremendous threats to the security and well-being of Americans in their own homeland. Furthermore, these events have demonstrated the importance of criminal-justice agencies who are the first responders to threats to the US. Since the threats of further terrorist attacks, natural disasters, epidemics and cyber crime continue to lurk as potential dangers to the homeland, the American Criminal Justice System must be committed to mitigating, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from these tragic events, and its commitment must be steadfast and ubiquitous.

The Truth about Syria

by Barry Rubin

From the publisher:
American policymakers have wrestled with the Syria question for years, but it has gained particular urgency in light of the war between Hezbollah and Israel and the country's continued support for the Iraq insurgency. With its mix of competing religious and ethnic groups, radical ideologies, and ferocious political repression, the growing tension surrounding Syria presents an increasingly serious problem for the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. Yet surprisingly, very little is known about this country and its role in shaping the destiny of the region. In this bold investigation, Middle East expert Barry Rubin looks at how the country has become the powderkeg of the Middle East and offers an insightful analysis of recent developments.

Barry Rubin is the author of The Long War for Freedom, Yasir Arafat, The Tragedy of the Middle East, and Hating America. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. He has been a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow and is the editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs.