And his access is incredible. I’ll have to say that, say, Tenet’s description of what when on and why has a bit more credibility than anyone not there. Now he has an agenda, so – - –
One can read in the same book Powell’s description of the same meeting, and Bush’s, etc.

No guessing, simply reporting, with sources a bit better than most have.
It’s worth a try, anyway. Any one of the books will be entertaining, anyway, and you can even Bush, Jr.’s, own description of why he invaded Afghanistan, for instance, in his own words.

You don’t read history to find out what really happened. You read it to see if you missed anything.

Iraq II was discretionary, optional, not even preemptive, fought for strategic reasons and with a strong economic component (oil and control of the Straits, plus intimidation of all the states bordering that country, by an American puppet regime installed under the guise of “freedom”. We know now that plans were being made even before 9/11 to take out Saddam; all we lacked was an excuse.

But neither our allies nor the American public saw it as necessary in order to punish the terrorists who attacked us first. Only the WMD justification could sway the US people to fight this war, an excuse the international community never bought into.

Whether the evidence of WMDs was a result of bad intelligence, self-deception and wishful thinking, or deliberate fabrication is debatable, but there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to persuade me it was the latter. The failure to find those weapons is the reason no one, foreign or domestic, believes Obama about the need to punish Syria for its NBC activities. Among the other unanticipated consequences, and probably the worst and most long-lasting, of Iraq, was the loss of US credibility, and the moral high ground.

Nations have the right, even the obligation, to defend themselves, and to retaliate against attack. Invading a country for strategic and economic reasons is aggression, pure and simple. Its the sort of thing we used to condemn the Russians and Chinese for even preparing for.

I don’t know where you get your information, but read Woodward and Tenet to start, then move on to Powell and when you are done I’ll get you the names of a few others I’ve read.

He WANTED to attack Afghanistan as soon as possible. Political reasons.

There was enormous economic benefit to one of his greatest constituencies, the munitions manufacturers.