Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild [Paperback]

If you really want to know how Bush got to be President, the real reasons we're in Iraq, the details of the infighting that made our occupation such a disaster, and the manifest and nefarious electoral machinations that the right inflicted on the democratic process in 2000 and 2004, and is putting in place for the elections of 2008, READ THIS BOOK. Palast has the interviews, the documents, and the facts that never get reported in the mainstream U.S. press. It's the first thing I've read that makes sense of how the battle for power between the Pentagon, the State Department, the neocons, Big Oil, and the Saudis played out on the ground in Iraq. It's a complex but fascinating sequence of events that explains the revolving-door administrations we put in place there and the flip-flopping approaches we tried to use, especially dealing with Iraq's oil. True, Palast comes across as an arrogant, in-your-face know-it-all. But I'm more than willing to put up with his abrasive style, given that he's willing to track down the real stories behind the most important events of our times and lay them out for us. I learned more per page of this new edition of _Armed Madhouse_ than almost any book I've read. If you're sick of the pap that passes for news, and eager to understand what's really going on, this is a crucial book. Robert Adler, author of Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome and Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation

Armed Madhouse is a Jon Stewart-like take on the George W. Bush administration. These are the political stories that you didn't see on the nightly news, the morning news, or the talk shows. If you want to know more about the causes and effects of American politics, this book is essential reading.

The best part of the book is the detailed description of how you can get rid of over 3 million votes, over 80 percent of which were cast for Kerry, and deny millions of others from voting . . . with a little help from your friends. In the new book, Brothers, there's the observation that there's so much voting fraud that goes on that you have to plan to indulge in the same if you want to be elected. After reading Armed Madhouse, I'm convinced.

My mother and sister have been telling me for years about how their electoral supervisors seem to be organized to create a lack of voting rather than voting in their rock-rib Democratic area. Now, I can see the hand behind their many tales of electoral incompetence . . . which I can now see as perhaps simply electoral competence in a partisan cause.

Based on this book, you can assume the next president will be a Republican. The Democrats are over ten years behind in dealing with election fraud . . . and falling further behind. Why? The Republican manipulations often help local Democratic officials get rid of their rivals within the party of the people.

The next most interesting part of the book comes in the behind-the-scenes battles between neo-cons and the oil industry to reap an economic windfall from Iraq, the true agenda behind the invasion in 2003.

Those who care about equal opportunity will be shocked by the section on class warfare. Most people haven't been paying attention since 2001 and don't realize how many of the basic safety net features for the poor and hurting have been permanently dismantled.

The section on the so-called war on terror is at its funniest where President Bush is quoted: In the final warning to Saddam Hussein on March 17, 2003, we are reminded that the president sternly said, "Do not destroy oil wells." At the time, I thought that statement was very puzzling. But now, I can see it was just a very interesting clue.

Those who don't know that political influence can be up for sale will be shocked by the reports of corruption in the book, but to me it wasn't anything new. The names just change, but politics by donation is a well established policy in the United States. It's an inevitable, and undesirable, feature of having two parties rather than people who primarily look out for the public interest.

A lot of the "economic" arguments in the book aren't well developed and will probably strike you as demagogic. That's too bad. Good arguments are available about how a different approach is more desirable for everyone, but you won't find those arguments in this book.

"Ok, what is it? Read it to me." Apparently, I had just uttered one of my rather frequent expletives as I was reading Armed Madhouse, and my wife wanted to know what it was THIS time that I found so incredulous.

And that's what it is like to read Greg Palast's new book. I mean, I'm someone who basically keeps up with Palast's reporting via his emails online, but this book is just chock full of "Holy Mackerel!!" moments. It is a revelation. It is great investigative journalism.

Palast aims his investigative team like a spotlight onto the dark corners of our times: whether it is the Iraq war and how we really got there and why it looks like nobody knows what they're doing and why Ahmad Chalabi is sitting next to the first lady at the state of the union one moment, and the next thing you know he's being arrested and charged with being a spy for Iran; or the 2000 election results, and how the touch screen machines are the least of our problems in 2008; or the Katrina debacle, or the real goal of No Child Left Behind, or why Harriet Miers got the Supreme Court nomination, or why we co-sponsored a coup against Hugo Chavez.

This truly is essential reading for an informed electorate. I can't endorse it highly enough.