Events Detail

                          Douglas Feith

              Dan Senor and Paul Wolfowitz

            Ken Weinstein and Peter Rodman

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War and Decision:

Inside the Pentagon at the

Dawn of the War on Terrorism

(Harper Collins, April 2008)

By

Douglas J. Feith

Monday, April 28

12:00 – 2:00 PM

Douglas Feith's remarkable War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism is the first book written by a former Bush Administration insider to offer a dispassionate and documented account of the reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. 

War and Decision, as the Wall Street Journal has noted, is the first "revisionist history" of the Iraq war.  It challenges the conventional wisdom that holds the belief that in a rush to war a cadre of neoconservatives politicized intelligence findings.

Henry Kissinger says of the book, "The fullest and most thoughtful statement of the Pentagon thinking prior to and in the first stages of the Iraq war. Even those, as I, who take issue with some of its conclusions will gain a better perspective from reading this book."

To explore Feith's account, Hudson Institute held a discussion with three former officials who were active participants in the decisions of the day:

• Paul Wolfowitz, Visiting Scholar with AEI, former President of the World Bank, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense;
• Peter Rodman, Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution and former Assistant Secretary for Defense and Adviser to the National Security Council;
• Dan Senor, former Senior Advisor to Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

This discussion was moderated by Hudson Institute CEO, Kenneth Weinstein.

Douglas J. Feith was appointed Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in 2001, and served in that capacity until the summer of 2005. Before that, Feith had served in the Reagan Administration as a Middle East specialist on the White House National Security Council staff, and as Deputy Assitant Secretary of Defense for Negotations.

Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center

Hudson Institute

1015 15th Street, NW, Sixth Floor

Washington, DC 20005