Chain of Command audiobook

This is an exposé, a lifting of the veil, a peek beneath the circus tent. It brings to mind a line from an old song: "When the truth is found, to be lies . . ." Or you can stick your head where the sun don't shine and blow it off.Certainly the behavior exhibited at Abu Ghraib was dishonorable, but this book goes waaay beyond that to lay the debacle that has become our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at the feet of our primary military and national leaders. In short, they led America down the garden path to feed their own fantasies and selfish desires for retribution and payback. Due to their obstinance and ignorance, the primary culprits behind 9/11 were allowed to escape entrapment with full knowledge on airplanes flying to and from Pakistan. WHY? And who paid with their lives for that? Still these fearless "leaders" walk freely among us drinking Cokes, getting heart transplants and painting pictures of farm animals. Yet no charges of treason or aid to the enemy during wartime have been filed.WHY?If not, then what is the meaning of "accountability" if it's not to the American public?

Depressing as hell. I'd heard an interview with Hersh at the time who said that there was more video taped evidence that would make the Abu Ghraib stuff look like child's play. But it sounds like the CIA has disposed of those to avoid any further "embarrassment." This book is both stomach-turning and necessary. And as long as large numbers of people get their opinions from Fox News and Country and Western songs, books like this are inconsequential in the near term.But historians will (hopefully) put more emphasis on Seymour Hersh than Toby Keith, and future generations will understand what this country was like at its worst.

***Trigger Warning*** (Mentions of torture, rape, sexual assault, pedophilia, etc)I remember clearly on April 28th, 2004 when I was sitting with my parents as they watched the news and my dad in a panic quickly told my sisters and I to turn around and not look at the blurred images that came on the screen. It had been too late because my 11 year old eyes had seen the white woman with a shit eating grin giving a thumbs up as she crouched in front of a pile of human bodies. An image I will never forget. The next day at our Islamic academy our Islamic studies teacher struggled to find words to describe his pain and disgust to articulate to a classroom full of Muslim children of multiple Arab races who had all seen the images on the CBS special the previous night with their own families. 'Those are your brothers and sisters,' he said choking back sobs. Seymour Hersh is an investigative journalist that is infamous for his expose piece on the My Lai massacre where the US Army savagely killed 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians during America's invasion of Vietnam. I have the highest respect for journalists that fight to get the truth out into the world, no matter how ugly, risking everything for the integrity of journalism and letting the world know what really happened.If I thought I detested Bush Jr. before with every fiber of my being, it is nothing to what I feel now after having read 'Chain of Command'. This book discusses everything leading up to America's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the creation of Guantanamo Bay, the formation of 'war on terror', the US taking over Saddam Hussein's prison Abu Ghraib, and the whistleblowers that helped allow Seymour Hersh to get this story to the American public.When Snowden released Wikileaks one of the documents I had read discussed the United State's torture policy, despite torture being against human rights and against the Geneva convention, and reading the parts about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were so barbaric and sickening I couldn't finish reading it all. This book was extremely difficult to read, and it took me a long time to finally decide to read this book because of how painful the subject matter is to our communities; Muslim, Arab, and Muslim and Arab Americans that grew up in post 9/11 America. This is an extremely important book, but it is very painful. I knew going into this that Abu Ghraib was bad, but the details in this book intensify it. American soldiers rounded up Iraqi civilians in street sweeps and threw them into the hell on earth that was Abu Ghraib prison. At the height of this horrific tragedy the US Army had over 3,800 Iraqi civilians detained in the prison in terrible conditions. Iraqi men, women, and children were subjected to torture, assault, rape (including the children), humiliation, and having the military dogs attacking them per orders of the soldiers. On top of all that the victims were subjected to the soldiers took photos of everything they were doing to add to the humiliation, and even video taped their depravity for use to blackmail. What CBS exposed as the 'Abu Ghraib Scandal' was only the tip of the iceberg of what these savages did. It had even been commented that the video evidence that was retrieved prior to destruction had made this 'scandal' look tame in comparison. The military got rid of a lot of the evidence, and it sickens me that some of the perpetrators took home photos as souvenirs.I resent that people try to justify and defend these perpetrators because they were 'young' and 'unsupervised'. These were racist, Islamophobic, and malicious scumbags who had no respect for human life. As a Muslim Arab American woman growing up in post 9/11 America I can verify stories that some people who served either of the wars have said to me in threats bragging about what they did and got away with, the hate crimes I and my family faced at their hands here in the states, and the pure hate that they had in their hearts. The men and women that were the whistleblowers who risked a great deal to get the truth to Seymour Hersh and human rights groups have my respect.The perpetrators of Abu Ghraib are now all free and that should bother everyone. Innocent people were tortured, raped, subjected to barbaric and inhuman conditions, and murdered (victims that died from the torture). The maximum sentence that one of the perpetrators received was 10 years, that is nothing and that is not justice, and they even got out early on parole. Some of the soldiers did not even serve jail time and only received slaps on the wrist in forms of a demotion within their rank. Bush, who approved all of the uses of torture within all of the US's facilities across the globe, all of the commanding officers, and the perpetrators of Abu Ghraib are all war criminals and they should be charged as such. I really wish this book included everything that was done to help all of the thousands of prisoners whose lives were scarred forever by what was done to them and everyone in that pit of hell with them.I really respect Hersh for being a journalist of integrity and doing whatever he had to do, risking everything, to get this story to the world despite everyone who wanted to keep it under wraps to maintain the facade.

Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention and this is his book on that. Like with My Lai, the audiobook explorers the culture that make the atrocity possible and the reaction of (Rumsefld's) dysfunctional institution. Hersh also suggests to me the thought that asymmetric war has successfully been done by Alexander in Afghanistan, Cortes in Mexico, Caesar in Gaul, etc. In each case soft intelligence with hard military technology fractured the enemy along natural fault lines of mistrust and division, bringing allies and opportunity to the invaders and sapping the strength of the insurgency. In Afghanistan and Iraq (and all the way back to Vietnam?), the U.S. blunders in like a juggernaut, forging a disjointed enemy into a united front with heavy-handed tactics that smack of prejudice and racism.This audio book includes an epilog read by the author as well as interview with him.

CoC is a compilation of pieces Hersh wrote for the New Yorker about the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy. It is a devastating look at the details of what occurred, with a considerable quantity of named sources. For obvious reasons, it was impossible for all his sources to allow their names to be used. We know how vengeful the Bushies are. This is one of the must-read books about the worst administration in American history.

Great book. Feel like I learned a lot and got a more clear look at the atrocities done by the bush administration.

There are always multiples sides to every story; Hersh, through his fearless, investigative journalism has brought one such "other" story to light. 1) Torture at Abu Ghraib - The gross violations of Human Rights.Evidence of the traumatic impact of the abuses was conveyed to me by a senior Iraqi weapons scientist, now living abroad, in the spring of 2004. He told me that several women detained at Abu Ghraib had "passed messages to their families imploring them to smuggle poison to them to end their lives, while others have passed similar messages insisting that they must be killed immediately upon release from prison," the senior scientist reported. "Such is the code of honor in most parts of the Middle East. Innocent lives will be lost [so] their families can survive the shame." 2) Intelligence failure How the American intelligence was not up to the task. Lack of resources, "The F.B.I.'s computer systems, for example, have been in disarray for more than a decade, making it difficult, if not possible, for analysts and agents to correlate and interpret intelligence. In March 2002, [...] that photographs of nineteen hijackers could not be sent electronically in the days immediately after September 11 to the F.B.I [...] because the F.B.I.'s computer systems weren't compatible", failure to take effective action when, "Throughout the spring and early summer of 2001, intelligence agencies flooded the government with warnings of possible terrorist attacks against American targets, including commercial aircraft, by Al Qaeda and other groups" and the "becoming" of the 20th hijacker.3) The Other War - The goal of American policy in Afghanistan "was not to set up a better regime for the Afghan people", Rubin wrote. "The goal was to get rid of the terrorist threat against America". Siege of Kunduz - How Pakistan managed to airlift Pakistanis and "other special leaders" just before the capture.4) The Iraq Hawks - Saddam, Chalabi, Trireme Partners L.P. "There is no question that Perle believed that removing Saddam from power was the right thing to do. At the same time, he set up a company that stood to gain from a war. In doing so, he ammunition not only to the Saudis but to his other ideological opponents as well."5) Who lied to whom? - The story of the Niger documents, identified Niger as the seller of the nuclear materials [to Iraq] and how they were analyzed to be ungenuine, repeatedly. "Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections put the British and the Americans on the losing side in the battle for international public opinion." and the ghost-hunt of W.M.D.'s as a pretense to a war that was planned years ahead of 9/11.6) The Secretary and the Generals REMF 7) A most dangerous Friend - That will be PakistanWhile U.S. was concerned with ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan, Pakistan was becoming a nuclear power (right under their noses). By the time, U.S. turned the attention towards Pakistan, A.Q. Khan had already been "dealing" in a nuclear black market, providing blueprints to N.Korea, Iran and Libya. 8) The Middle East after 9/11Saudi Arabia: Sponsorer of terrorism AND an important ally of the U.S.Israel and Kurds: "Israeli involvement in Kurdistan was not new. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Israel actively supported a Kurdish rebellion against Iraq, as part of its strategic policy of seeking alliances with non-Arabs in the Middle East."In conclusion, Hersh asks more questions, "some of the most important questions are not even being asked. How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that a war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American priorities and policies with such ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, misled the Congress, and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile?"That is another part of the story. Final comment: It was not an easy read but nonetheless a very important one. I think I am privileged enough to take books out of the library in order to attempt to learn more and not just believe in what our television shows us. A very scary thought!

Interesting account of the Intelligence community and successive US Government positions in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.Hersh writes without fear or favour and is equally scathing of both sides of politics and their responses to World events.Leaves the reader to form their own conclusions about the Bush admins handling of the aftermath of the War in Iraq.Fascinating insight.

A sobering piece of American history and over a decade late the people in charge never held accountable. George Bush has successfully whitewashed his image and is now just the aw shucks good guy who paints pictures and who Michelle Obama passes candy to at national events. We need this kind of journalism and sadly it’s disappearing. Torture is difficult to read about, no matter who does it, but why do we tolerate it? Why isn’t Guantanamo closed?

Really interesting book about horrible events and people defending doing terrible things in the fight for for freedom. A tough read - I got upset, disgusted and angry a lot and am grateful this information came to light.

Explains !!!

A really, really good book but so much information on so many aspects of foreign affairs made it seem bogged down in places.

It's been well over a decade since publication but Hersch remains the gold standard for reporting on he machinations that led to US involvement in Iraq.