Chapter nine, The Road Map to Nowhere, shows the pattern of deceit, weapons buildup, and contempt for United Nations resolutions exhibited by Saddam Hussein in the years after the first Gulf War. As Butler, former UNSCOM head, argues, the United Nations undermined UNSCOM efforts by accepting the absurd demands of Saddam Hussein while claiming he was in check. Butler argues nothing was further from the truth as every time Saddam got the opportunity he made more demands on the United Nations, such as the right to maintain palaces that were exempt from inspections. We see in contemporary times how faulty this logic was in a complete vindication of ButlerÆs views in this chapter.

In chapter ten, The Five-Dollar Bet, we see more of IraqÆs pattern of deception and weapons buildup. Butler (2000) claims that any of there declarations ôremained implausible, almost uselessö primarily because of efforts to continue to conceal weapons of mass destruction. Butler was basically fighting Iraq at the same time he had to fight the United Nations because of its lax policies in effectively dealing with SaddamÆs continued noncompliance. Further, Iraq continued to paint the UNSCOM as a spy and an enemy whose motives made its every action suspect and unreliable. In other words, it was readily apparent that Iraq n

ot only lied but painted others as liars who told the truth. Unfortunately this worked for a decade and served to worsen the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

The Son of UNSCOM, chapter thirteen, reveals the eventual removal of Butler from UNSCOM because of continued resistance on behalf of Russia, France, and China. Russia and France to this day have fought United States efforts to disarm Hussein. Hussein had so effectively won support from such nations that when Butler left UNSCOM it seemed to many as if he were the reason Iraq had not totally disarmed, a ludicrous notion. Butler spends the rest of this chapter reiterating the greatest threat, a threat that at the time of his writing this book had no direct supervision, the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a madman like Saddam Hussein.

In chapter eleven, The Great Scud Hunt, Gordon recounts the challenges posed by IraqÆs use of Scud missiles to offset air strikes. He explores the many decisions that led up to SchwarzkopfÆs failure to estimate the threat of such weapons, including faulty intelligence, exaggerated faith in airpower, CENTCOMÆs indifference toward Israel, a country outside of CENTCOMÆs region of responsibility, and skepticism about the ability to track down and destroy such missiles (Gordon, 1995, 229). Again and again in this chapter we see how wrong information can be perpetuated as truth in ways that have devastating results in times of military conflict.

The recent reluctance of Middle Eastern nations and those like Germany, France, and Russia to support the United States in its military action against Iraq reveals that GordonÆs twelfth chapter, With Friends Like These, is as timely now as it was when written nearly a decade ago. Similar to the struggles the Bush Administration had in winning support for troops and airspace among Middle Eastern nations over the pas