Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Chain of Command

The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers — and outraged the Bush Administration — with his stories in The New Yorker magazine, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Gharaib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning when hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?

Hersh established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism thirty-five years ago when he broke the news of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Ever since, he's challenged America's power elite by publishing the stories that others can't or won't tell.

In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush's ""war on terror"" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.

Read by Peter Friedman

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Starting by unraveling the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the author uses unnamed sources and many documents to make his case against the policies of George W. Bush. Seymour M. Hersh, an investigative journalist for THE NEW YORKER, describes his work as an alternative history of the Iraq war. One novelty comes from the abridgment's format--selected chapters, rather than selected text. Peter Friedman, the unhurried reader, takes time to enunciate every word without letting the pace drag. He uses a deeper voice for quoted material and a dropped volume for parenthetical remarks, making it easy to discern the author's punctuation and follow the points of the audiobook. J.A.H. 2005 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 13, 2004
      Based on previously published articles and supplemented by fresh revelations, this book by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Hersh, who writes for The New Yorker and has authored several books (The Dark Side of Camelot, etc.), charges the Bush administration with being propelled by ideology and hamstrung by incompetence in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas. One former intelligence official observes that the Bush administration staffers behaved "as if they were on a mission from God," while another laments, "The guys at the top are as ignorant as they could be." It's no surprise, then, that the dissenters want to talk or that the Hersh, who has a reputation for integrity and enviable inside access, ferrets them out, assembling critiques from diverse, mostly unidentified sources at home and abroad. According to Hersh, the dire conditions that "enemy combatants" suffered at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, presaged detainee abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Hersh reveals the depravities purportedly occurring at Guantanamo and argues that Donald Rumsfeld wasn't the only one responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib: "the President and Vice President had been in it, and with him, all the way." The book also covers some familiar ground, exploring pre-9/11 intelligence oversights and the administration's misconception that Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Israel, Turkey and the Kurds would jump on the democracy bandwagon after the invasion of Iraq. But Hersh reserves his sharpest words for President Bush, suggesting the "terrifying possibility" that "words have no meaning for this President beyond the immediate moment, and so he believes that his mere utterance of the phrases makes them real." Hersh's critics may dismiss these explosive, less than objective conclusions. For others, however, this sobering book is the closest anyone without a security clearance will get to operatives in the inner sanctums of America's intelligence, military, political and diplomatic worlds.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading