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This is the book Tony Blair doesn't want you to read about 7/7.

In February 2003, Tony Blair was warned by British intelligence that the invasion of Iraq would 'heighten' the risk of terrorism in Britain.

In July 2005, al-Qaeda struck in the heart of London. Despite the British Government's increasingly desperate attempts at denial, polls show that an overwhelming majority of people in Britain are convinced that there is a connection between the London bombings and the war on Iraq. A majority of Britons fault Tony Blair himself.

Using secret government documents declassified since the bombings, and leaks from British intelligence, Milan Rai exposes official deceit at the highest levels, and establishes the crucial role of British foreign policy in generating a home-grown version of al-Qaeda. Rai shows how an official report drawn up by the Home Office and Foreign Office in early 2004 identified 'foreign policy' - and the war in Iraq in particular - as a major cause of alienation among young British Muslims.

Examining the backgrounds of the 7/7 bombers, Milan Rai demonstrates that Islam is not to blame. Most importantly, the book shows us how to make sure that this never happens again -- and offers brief obituaries for the 52 people who lost their lives that day.

Over the last five years, a cycle of films has emerged addressing the ongoing Iraq conflict. Some became well-known and one of them, The Hurt Locker, won a string of Oscars. But many others disappeared into obscurity. What is it about these films that led Variety to dub them a 'toxic genre'?

Martin Barker analyses the production and reception of these recent Iraq war films. Among the issues he examines are the borrowing of soldiers’ YouTube styles of self-representation to generate an ‘authentic’ Iraq experience, and how they take refuge in ‘apolitical’ post-traumatic stress disorder. Barker also looks afresh at some classic issues in film theory: the problems of accounting for film ‘failures’, the shaping role of production systems, the significance of genre-naming and the impact of that 'toxic' label.

A 'Toxic Genre' is fascinating reading for film studies students and anyone interested in cinema's portrayal of modern warfare.

Awaiting a TV talk show appearance, John Townley is quaking with dread. He has published a best-selling memoir about the Iraq War, a page-turner climaxing in atrocity. In a green room beyond the soundstage, he braces himself to confront the charismatic soldier at the violent heart of it. But John has never actually seen the man before—nor served in Iraq, nor the military. Even so, and despite the deception, he knows his fabricated memoir contains stunning truths.

By turns comic, suspenseful, bitingly satirical, and emotionally potent, A Big Enough Lie pits personal mistruths against national ones of life-and-death consequence. Tracking a writer from the wilds of Florida to New York cubicles to Midwestern workshops to the mindscapes of Baghdad—and from love to heartbreak to solitary celebrity—Bennett’s novel probes our endlessly frustrated desire to grab hold of something (or somebody) true.

"A substantial contribution to understanding the role of public opinion and the news media during the Iraq War. Equally impressive, it effectively puts the domestic context of U.S. policy in historical perspective, making the book useful to historians as well as to political scientists."
---Ralph B. Levering, Davidson College

"American Public Opinion on the Iraq War sets out to chart against a detailed account of the war a nuanced assessment of how public opinion on the conflict evolved, the partisan differences that emerged, how the issue affected other areas of foreign policy opinion, and the limits of public opinion on policy. It succeeds at all of this, and it does so in a manner that is at once informative, inherently interesting, and exceptionally easy to read."
---Randolph M. Siverson, University of California, Davis

Ole R. Holsti explores the extent to which changes in public opinion reflected the vigorous public relations efforts of the Bush administration to gain support for the war and the partisanship marking debates over policies toward Iraq. Holsti investigates the ways in which the Iraq experience has led substantial numbers of Americans to reconsider their nation's proper international role, and he assesses the impact that public opinion has had on policymakers. Significantly, Holsti places his findings in a broader context to address the role of public opinion and of the media in democratic governance.

A study of transnational identity, migration, and state loyalties told through the social and political history of Iran’s Khuzestan province.

In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘athist forces invaded Khuzestan, one of the oldest and richest provinces in Iran, triggering the Iran-Iraq War. Shaherzad Ahmadi’s Bordering on War examines the social history of Khuzestan and sheds light on how border dwellers, provincial leaders, and migrants in the region shaped Iran and Iraq's history before, during, and after the war.

Drawing from a rich collection of Persian- and Arabic-language archival sources—rarely used by western scholars due to restrictions in Iran—Ahmadi’s research focuses on Arab Iranians and argues that Iranian border dwellers and migrants formed local, non-national loyalties, thereby eschewing bureaucratic pressures to confine loyalties to a single nation-state. The transnational character and ethnically diverse composition of Khuzestan, especially in the oil-rich towns on the southwestern border, led many, including Iraq’s Ba‘ath Party, to question the national belonging of Arab Iranians. Bordering on War contributes to a wider discussion about the ability of individuals and communities to exert agency through migration, trade, education, and other activities.

For nearly two decades, the US and its allies have prosecuted war and aggression in Iraq. Erasing Iraq shows in unparalleled detail the devastating human cost of the war in Iraq.

Western governments and the mainstream media continue to ignore or play down the human costs of the war on Iraqi citizens This has allowed them to present their role as the benign guardians of Iraqi interests. The authors deconstruct this narrative by presenting a portrait of the total carnage in Iraq today. From Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan and the West, to civilians left behind, and other witnesses, this the story of the war told by those who experienced it firsthand.

Following the end of the draft in 1973, the US military increasingly offered women the opportunity to transform their lives—to obtain an education, receive healthcare, provide for their families, and prove their worth to the nation. By the time the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan at the turn of the twenty-first century, the labor of women—and Black women in particular—was critical to the military’s ability to simultaneously wage two wars. Within the context of counterinsurgencies fought amid civilian populations, the US military discovered the value of women’s gender difference as a weapon of war.

Through ethnographic and archival research with women soldiers and Marines, as well as military and government officials, Gender Is a Weapon contextualizes women’s service in Iraq and Afghanistan against the promises of liberal inclusion unfolding throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Centered on narratives of Black and Indigenous women, women of color, immigrant women, and queer women, the book analyzes the transformations of martial citizenship; the racialized language of cultural difference in the US’s revitalized counterinsurgency doctrine; the gendered performances of women in combat and civilian engagement missions; and ultimately, the irreparable injuries of body and mind with which these women returned home. The epilogue discusses the recent dismantling of DEI in the military and US government more broadly, reflecting on what we can learn from the violent history of military liberal inclusion to help us better understand our contemporary moment. By carefully attending to both the discursive construction and performative enactment of gender in militarized and securitized contexts, the book advances theoretical frames for studying gender in state militaries, militarism, and late liberalism.
 

Journalist Jonathan Cook explores Israel’s key role in persuading the Bush administration to invade Iraq, as part of a plan to remake the Middle East, and their joint determination to isolate Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons that might rival Israel’s own.
 
This concise and clearly argued book makes the case that Israel's desire to be the sole regional power in the Middle East neatly chimed with Bush’s objectives in the “war on terror”.
 
Examining a host of related issues, from the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to the role of Big Oil and the demonisation of the Arab world, Cook argues that the current chaos in the Middle East is the objective of the Bush administration – a policy that is equally beneficial to Israel.

The Iraq war defined the first decade of the twenty-first century – leading to mass protests and raising profound questions about domestic politics and the use of military force. Yet most explanations of the war have a narrow focus either on political personalities or oil.

Christopher Doran provides a unique perspective, arguing that the drive to war came from the threat Iraq might pose to American economic hegemony if the UN sanctions regime was ended. Doran argues that this hegemony is rooted in third world debt and corporate market access. It was protection of these arrangements that motivated US action, not Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction or a simplistic desire to seize its oil.

This book will provide new insights on the war which still casts a shadow over global politics, and will have wide appeal to all those concerned about the Middle East, world peace and global development.

Did the US and UK governments lie about weapons of mass destruction to promote an attack on Iraq?

Did the media hold them to account or act as cheerleaders for war?

Tell me Lies reveals the systematic propaganda used by both the US and UK governments to convince us of the 'threat' from Iraq. It shows how we were deliberately misled into a war that has resulted in a humanitarian disaster in Iraq and threatens to create further instability and resentment of the US and UK throughout the Middle East.

Written by some of the world's leading journalists and commentators, it's a scathing indictment of the role of the mainstream media in legitimising government actions and undermining dissent. Critics, activists and journalists from both sides of the Atlantic explore alternatives such as the internet and Al Jazeera and provide analysis and guidance on resisting the media war.

Contributors include John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Edward Herman, Mark Thomas, Mark Steel, Phillip Knightley, Tim Llewelyn (BBC Middle East Correspondent), Abdul Hadi Jiad (Iraqi journalist sacked by the BBC before the war), David Cromwell and David Edwards (Media Lens), Mark Curtis, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (PR Watch, and co-authors of Weapons of Mass Deception and Toxic Sludge is Good For You), Pat Holland, Norman Solomon (columnist and director of the Institute for Public Accuracy), Nancy Snow (California State University, Fullerton, author of Propaganda Inc. and Information War), Doug Kellner (UCLA), Julian Petley, Yvonne Ridley (Aljazeera.net and author of In the Hands of the Taliban), Tim Gopsill (Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom), Faisal Bodi (UK Guardian, Aljazeera.net), Alistair Alexander (Stop the War Coalition), Greg Philo (Glasgow University Media Group), Steve Dorrill, Andy Rowell, Granville Williams and cartoonists Steve Bell, Steve Caplin and Polyp.

The Iraqi city of Fallujah has become an epicenter of geopolitical conflict, where foreign powers and non-state actors have repeatedly waged war in residential neighborhoods with staggering humanitarian consequences. The Sacking of Fallujah is the first comprehensive study of the three recent sieges of this city, including those by the United States in 2004 and the Iraqi-led operation to defeat ISIS in 2016.

Unlike dominant military accounts that focus on American soldiers and U.S. leaders and perpetuate the myth that the United States “liberated” the city, this book argues that Fallujah was destroyed by coalition forces, leaving public health crises, political destabilization, and mass civilian casualties in their wake. This meticulously researched account cuts through the propaganda to uncover the lived experiences of Fallujans under siege and occupation, and contextualizes these events within a broader history of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Relying on testimony from Iraqi civilians, the work of independent journalists, and documentation from human rights organizations, Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn place the experiences of Fallujah's residents at the center of this city's recent history.