ALLIES Why the West Had to Remove Saddam WILLIAM SHAWCROSS

"A compellingly written polemic."
Washington Post Book World

"If you read just one book on the Iraq war and its aftermath, this is it. Allies is both enlightening and morally invigorating."
Weekly Standard

"The book is argued with great coherence."
Los Angeles Times

"[C]learly written, concise and sharply argued...[Shawcross] skillfully presents the strongest case possible for both the necesssity and moral imperative for waging war to free Iraq from the reign of the Hitler-like Hussein."
New York Post

"In riveting detail, [Shawcross] tells the story of French vanity, greed, and collusion with one of the most barbaric tyrants of the last half-century. In short, this book is a gem."
National Review

"William Shawcross is one of a handful of European intellectuals who have bravely resisted the Gadarene rush to condemn Bush and Blair for liberating a country accurately described as 'a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath it.' Shawcross's well-informed, lucid account of events leading up to (and beyond) the war explains why Bush and Blair were prepared to take such enormous risks, not just with their political careers, but with the lives of twentysomething farm boys from the Carolinas or motor mechanics from Middlesbrough. …Shawcross's brilliant account of high-level diplomacy is unsparingly damning of the slippery Chirac and Schröder. … Let's hope that Shawcross is right in believing that the coalition leaders have the will to stay that particular course. If they don't, we will all bear the terrible consequences."
Sunday Times (London)

"William Shawcross's Allies is a work of courage and clarity, a plainly, sometimes plaintively, argued piece of common sense that brings the debate back to the ground on which it too rarely stands … Shawcross should be attended to not least because he has argued himself into his present position from one who was opposed: his Sideshow was an indictment of the US bombing of Cambodia. But in three decades of international reporting, including extensive writing on the UN, he has come to share the once-common, now reviled, belief that 'American commitment and American sacrifice are essential to the world.' We live in genuinely strange and disappointing times, when the majority party of the left [Labour] has turned on a leader who has been the leading proponent of the overthrow of tyrannies. Shawcross is an antidote to these out-of-joint times: he may make a large contribution to setting them right."
Herald (Glasgow)

"William Shawcross's Allies is expanded and updated from his Harkness Lecture in the spring, a lucid and judicious analysis of the ways in which the challenge posed by Iraq was unlike anything previously faced by the postwar Western consensus. … Shawcross gives a useful account of the development of neo-conservative thought, providing a useful corrective to some of the more absurd travesties that have hindered helpful debate."
The Times (London)

"Allies is an articulate, informed presentation of the core relationship between George Bush and Tony Blair that has had such an impact on British politics … Allies has its real value in its lucid and hugely readable understanding of the Bush/Blair outlook."
Independent

"Allies is an account of the Iraqi crisis, its causes and consequences. Writing in persuasive prose and relying mostly on material from the media, Shawcross lets the record speak for itself... With cogency and passion, Allies makes the case that this [anti-American] kind of prejudice is disgraceful in itself--a negation of reality and a potential threat to the west and to the whole world order."
Sunday Telegraph (London)

"It all seemed so simple. Either you were for the invasion of Iraq or against it; either you believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or you didn't; either you thought Saddam was too dangerous to trust or you didn't; either you thought George Bush was right or that he was a hypocritical, bullying, imperialist oil-grabber. William Shawcross, like The Economist, was in the former of all those categories and is unrepentant about it. The point of this short, polemical book is to explain why. In also telling the story of the build-up to war, though, it shows how the issues weren't simple at all. Which is one big reason why the war took place."
The Economist