Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq

Mr. Duelfer seems to have been in a unique position to teach us about Iraq. His approach is heavily weighted towards laying out the facts and gently guiding you to some important (and inescapable) conclusions. I suspect he has strong opinions but above all he makes a compelling case for always gathering more information to test opinions and not just confirm them. In every book there is an opportunity to selects facts which support your hypotheses. If Mr. Duelfer has engaged in such tactics, I was not able to detect it. Before reading this book I was quite convinced that the whole Iraq effort was simply a bad idea that inevitably led to a bad outcome. This was based entirely on news media accounts. This book does not so much contradict the news and analysis but rather fills in the gaps and demonstrates how news reports can be skewed. With all the facts presented here, the book could have been dry or didactic. I found it to be neither. I found it to be so compelling at times, I could not put it down. The section on Saddam's final days alone are well worth the cover price. There are also sprinkled throughout, telling details which gave me opportunities to imagine what things must have been like. I know my imagination is no substitute for experience but I was glad for the chance to use it. In my youth, I used to believe there was no intersection between books that teach and books that entertain. I am very pleased to again find a book which dispels that notion.

Just adding my voice to the other reviewers. One of the books that ia must read to get the true Iraq war picture. Honest and objective from someone who knows what he is talking about..pretty rare these days

This is a great book. It is a honor to have been there to protect Mr. Duelfer. Every time I picked up this book it took right back to Baghdad as if I was back on the team transporting and protecting this great man again. I can say from personal experince that every detail in this book is true. And just a line or two to Mr. Duelfer. Thank you for this book. It means alot to me that you want the world to know about myself and my two fallen brothers Clint and Don . If you read this book and at the end of it you still dont agree with the war I hope you will atlest understand that the many soldiers who have been KIA and one that are critily wounded like myself are just normal every day people just like you. And they should not be put down and discriminatied against because of what their goverment sent them to do.

As someone who is very familiar with the pre- and post-war efforts in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I would say that if one is interested in the WMD issue that underpinned the US Government's decision to invade Iraq and curious to understand this issue in-depth enough to draw your own conclusions then Duelfer's book is a must read. First of all, the book reads like a novel, thanks to Duelfer's anecdotal approach complemented by his typical and almost satirical dry humor. Secondly, I think that the book provides a unique optic for not only gaining a better appreciation of Duelfer's 2004 WMD report but also for providing the context that will allow one to critically discern the chaff from reality in the barrage of media sound bytes on what was and wasn't found, concluded, or done in the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. I know Duelfer. He's an adrenaline but not a glamour junkie. He's not the kind who is looking for a stage or a story. And, I believe that the motivation for his writing of this book, after he had already published his findings in his comprehensive 2004 report, is because he felt that the public's conclusions drawn from the report were not fully informed. He wanted a last shot in telling the story through his own eyes so maybe people could see the same data through a different lens. Maybe it would or would not make a difference but I think it provided him the platform for writing the epilogue to this long saga--a saga to which he had devoted a good part of his career as a civil servant. What I found to be the most enlightening "lesson learned" from this book is that the "devil is in the details." Conclusions based on "just the facts" or, in other words, assessments of Iraq's WMD programs based purely on the data and evidence obtained during the search efforts without an understanding and appreciation for the environment at the time of these efforts (i.e. the political dynamics, the living conditions, the cultural backdrop, the pertinent actors, their personalities, and the state-of-play among and between them) are short-sighted and potentially flawed, at best. It's clear that after reading Duelfer's book you leave convinced that these "intangibles" should just as much be part of the evidentiary base as the "hard" data is--especially in the case of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, where there was no "slam dunk" indicating a viable and operational WMD program, nor any "smoking gun" suggesting one no longer existed. It's hard to prove a negative and realizing that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, it behooves us to learn from Duelfer's story and, like the Iraq WMD story, come to our conclusions only after getting answers to the questions that will allow us to weigh both the tangibles and the intangibles.

I had the opportunity to brief Mr. Duelfer in Iraq a couple of times and hear him speak on a daily basis. So I am very familiar with him, even if I was relatively junior. Nonetheless, it is very clear that Duelfer is as intelligent they come. While it must be pointed out that he is selling a book here, he is certainly the foremost of experts on the topic of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No one else has spent as much time on the ground and knows Iraq backwards and forwards like he does. Duelfer knows all of the major players in Iraq. While I might disagree with some of the things he has to say, he has certainly earned the right to provide this firsthand account which should be considered an important primary document for future historians. I would say his writing--from what I've read so far--is fairly balanced. However, it is EXTREMELY important to note that he is very nuanced. For those who are cynical, you could say Duelfer knows how to "play the center." Indeed, when he presented his findings from the Iraq Survey Group to Congress, there was ample fodder for those in both parties to either defend or attack the Bush Administration's policies. If you have inclinations that are significantly right or left of center, you should keep this in mind. At the end of the day, this is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in Iraq or the use of intelligence to support decision-making at the highest levels of the US Government. Highly recommended.