The invasion and occupation of Iraq wasn't just a tragic mistake. It was a crime.

From the planning of aggression in 2002 through years of hostile military occupation, the United States systematically violated the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions and virtually every principle of international law and order.

America's crimes against the people of Iraq were shielded from public scrutiny by what senior U.S. military officers called the "quiet, disguised, media-free approach" developed in Central America in the 1980s. The echo chamber of the Western corporate media fleshed out the Pentagon's propaganda to create a virtual Iraq in the minds of the public, feeding a political discourse that bore no relation to the real war it was waging, the country it was destroying or the lives of its inhabitants.

In an easily readable and flowing narrative, Nicolas Davies has carefully taken apart the wall of propaganda surrounding one of history's most significant military disasters and most serious international crimes: non-existent WMDs; the equally fictitious "centuries-old sectarian blood feud" in Iraq; and the secrecy of the dirty war waged by American-led death squads. Unlike other writers, Davies has firmly placed each aspect of the war within a coherent context of illegal aggression, hostile military occupation and popular resistance, to uncover the brutal reality of a war that has probably killed at least a million people.

"A clear, intelligent and accurate description of how we are involved in aggression in Iraq. Congratulations!" - Benjamin B. Ferencz, former Chief Prosecutor, U.S. War Crimes Tribunal, Nuremberg.

"If the Iraq occupation lasts another 50 years, it's doubtful a better account of it will be produced than this one." - David Swanson, Author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.