Iraq: The Cost Of War

Tony Blair's decision to back George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq will go down as a defining moment for Blair, and for Britain.

As Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock was centre stage in the dramatic months leading up to the Iraq war. After the war, he was the UK's highest authority on the ground, and worked side by side with Paul Bremer, the US administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, in Baghdad. He was privy to the inner workings of power in the Coalition Provisional Authority and saw first-hand the impact of the divisive turf wars back in Washington. This extraordinary book is a record of what he saw.

Greenstock takes us behind closed doors in the tumultuous days leading up to the Iraq war. He gives his appraisal of key characters in Washington, London, Paris, Iraq and the Middle East; and he examines the wider questions surrounding the war on terror. How genuine was Bush's offer to take Iraq to the UN? Was the war legal? And, in a shifting political climate and with the revelations brought to light by the Chilcot Inquiry, what effect does it continue to have on Britain's long-term relations with America and Europe?

Prohibited from publication when originally written in 2004, and fully updated and revised following the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry, Iraq: The Cost of War is a dramatic and groundbreaking blow-by-blow account of one of the most pivotal and controversial conflicts in recent world history.