Hersh Rave

Michiko Kakutani loved Seymour Hersh’s new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Hersh’s revelations this spring about Abu Ghraib and a corrosive internal report prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba were picked up by other publications around the world and helped lead to Pentagon investigations and Congressional hearings on abuse at the prison. And much of his post-9/11 reporting – which frequently provoked controversy and criticism when it first appeared – has since come to be accepted as conventional wisdom: that intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (used by the Bush administration to sell Congress and the American public on the war) was selective, sensationalized or just plain wrong; that a group of conservative, utopian civilians dominated thinking about Iraq at the Pentagon; that the C.I.A. was a deeply troubled agency with a director, George J. Tenet, who would not last in the job; and that the Bush administration’s war and postwar planning for Afghanistan and Iraq was seriously flawed.

Read the review in full here.