Let me recommend a book to you in very strong terms. It’s called The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq by Ken Pollack. I can’t do an extensive review of the book here since I’ve just completed a formal 
magazine review of it which will be appearing in a few weeks. And I don’t want to step, as it were, on my own toes. Or more to the point, the magazine’s toes — if magazines have toes.
As the title states, the book argues that there is no other good solution to the Iraq problem save a military one. Pollack is an ardent critic of the slapdash and petulantly unilateralist way the Bush administration seems inclined to go about it. (This actually is the new TPM catch-phrase for Bush administration foreign policy: petulant unilateralism) But at the end of the 
day he thinks that the only real option is to topple Saddam’s regime and that the only real way to do that is by force.
Now, I know many regular TPM readers don’t agree at all with that proposition. It’s one I find both deeply troubling and, I think, inescapable. But even if you don’t agree — perhaps especially if you don’t — I think you’ll get a lot out of this book.
This is the most honest, candid, and intelligent discussion I’ve read of this topic. Pollack explains very clearly why serious people — and not just yahoos — believe that the current Iraqi regime represents a serious threat. Pollack, who spent most of the last decade formulating Iraq policy for the US government, also makes a compelling case that the policy we pursued toward Iraq in recent years was and is just a losing game.
Whether you’re for ‘regime change’ or against it, if you want to really understand this issue in detail and have your beliefs and preconceptions seriously challenged, buy this book.
