GEORGE PACKER: THE ASSASSIN'S GATE

Packer's book provides more evidence that the Bush regime bungled post-war Iraq. Here are a few tidbits that I was unaware of or had forgotten:

- Robert Kagan, early proponent of the neo-con plan to rule the earth. (pp. 17-21) I hadn't realized that he and Bill Kristol founded PNAC.

- As an undergraduate at Cornell, Paul Wolfowitz fell under the influence of Allan Bloom. (p. 25)
Philip Gorman, a character in Saul Bellow's novel Ravelstein, is based upon Wolfowitz.

- "On September 17 [2001], six days after the attacks, Bush told his war council, 'I believe Iraq was involved." (p. 41)

- Albert Camus' The Rebel describes the Islamic nihilistic terrorists. (p. 49)

- Fouad Ajami was at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies when his pal Paul Wolfowitz was a dean there. (p. 51)

- Chalabi's INC botched several coup attempts in the mid-90s. (p. 77)