Palast is a fairly amazing representative of a nearly dead breed; in fact he may well be the last real investigative reporter with a USA beat working today. Read with your sense of humor cranked way up, though, or the depressing implication of Palast's research will make you cry. ( )

made my blood boil

This book has a documented revelation of criminal activity by the Bush gang on every other page, and this is a bit too many; I found it very difficult to follow the thread. - But it seems the world is run by the Saudi sheik’s, mainly through their lawyer Jim Baker III, who has an office in the white house. He originally gave Saddam the go-ahead to snatch a few Kuwaiti oil fields, but not the whole land, which when he did had to be reacted angrily to. The later invasion was about the oil, but not getting it, no the world is awash with oil and Iraq has too much of it, but Saddam didn’t keep pumping at a steady (low) flow so he had to be taken out so as to keep a high stable oil price for the Saudi sheiks who sends the petrodollar back into the US. Something Bin Laden objects to. Anyway, Hugo Chavez is a good guy who acts like a good Norwegian Huey P. Long, defending South America against the North, and the two latest US elections were rigged, but too many voted for Bush anyway, so, although the fix is in for 08, the Americans will have to vote right this time ... this, or something thereabouts, the book reveals with numbers, names, and photographed documents
It seems the author is a “guerrilla” producer of television documentaries and that these form the basis of this book. I suggest watching the content on TV might be less confusing. Mr Palast must be given credit for messing with a dangerous bunch though. That his reporting, as he says, is only seen outside the US is partly regrettable. Good thing is that as long as they're not bombarded with depressing facts of this kind, the Amercan proles will find enough comfort in guns and Jesus and not feel compelled to do something destabilising. ( )

Here is another compendium of political and corporate con men who would sell your future and your children's future to the highest bidder (or give it away to their political friends).

Everyone thinks that George Bush had a secret plan to seize Iraq's oil. Actually, there were 2 secret plans. The neo-con/Pentagon plan involved privatizing, or selling off, Iraq's vast oil reserves to foreign companies. When all those oil wells start pumping, ignoring their OPEC quota (insurgency? what insurgency?), the world market would be flooded with oil, causing the price to plummet. OPEC would be forced out of business, and, coincidentally, Saudi Arabia, the real target, would be forced to its financial knees. A problem with this is the assumption that the oil fields would remain undamaged in an American invasion. Also, it would be silly to think that Saudi Arabia would sit back and let this happen. Whenever other OPEC countries have ignored their quota, the Saudis have opened their oil spigots, flooding the market and causing the price to drop, forcing the offending country into bankruptcy. Also, the major oil companies made it very clear that privatizing Iraqi oil would not be acceptable. But they had no problem with the privatizing of the rest of Iraq, including the sale of banks and water companies, big tax cuts for wealthy Iraqis, a complete elimination of tariffs and new copyright laws protecting American companies.

The State Department/Council on Foreign Relations plan involved keeping the Iraqi government as is, especially the state oil monopoly. It also envisioned the removal of Saddam Hussein as taking no more than THREE DAYS. Hussein would be overthrown, some Iraqi general dismissed by Hussein in the 1980s (it didn't matter who) would come in by parachute, he would be given the keys to Iraq's political and security apparatus, and snap elections would be held in 90 days to legitimize everything. Simple, no? Once the Pentagon got wind of it, the three-day part didn't last very long.

Saddam Hussein's "crime," the reason he was removed from power, had nothing to do with being a tyrant, or WMD, or gassing the Kurds of Halabja. When it came to oil production, one week he would suddenly decide to support the Palestinian cause, and not pump any oil at all. The next week, he would forget about the Palestinians, and pump right up to the Oil for Food limit. Singlehandedly turning the world oil market into a yo-yo upset Big Oil and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others. It's all about control of the oil market, and Hussein was not cooperating.

This book is about much more than just Iraq. Palast goes into great detail about how the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen by the Republicans. Any number of methods have come to life, from using supposed lists of felons, to sending not enough machines to black districts, to machines in those same districts that miscount or don't count votes at a much greater rate than in white districts, to uncounted paper ballots in the tens of thousands. In Native American districts in the Southwest, if one accepts the "official" results, many Native Americans would drive miles and miles to the polling place, and specifically NOT vote for President. What are Democrats doing about this, if only to be sure that it never happens again? Little or nothing. This book also covers subjects like globalization, New Orleans, No Child Left Behind and Enron.

By themselves, any of the chapters in this book are worth the price of the book. Put them together, and this book easily reaches the level of Wow. It's an extraordinary piece of journalism, and is extremely highly recommended. ( )

Massively well-informed in a gossipy kind of way. I hadn't come across Palast before and didn't know he was working on Newsnight. He is the kind of investigative journalist whose work can form the basis for activism - he leaves no stone unturned and no name uncalled. Good for links to other activist sites. ( )