Book review: debriefing the president: the interrogation of Saddam Hussein by John Nixon

In Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, John Nixon tells the fascinating story of Saddam Hussein’s capture and interrogation. At the same time, writes Joe Devanny, Nixon excoriates the George W. Bush administration’s approach to intelligence and policy in the build-up to the Iraq war. This is a short, highly readable book, suffused with controlled anger at the intelligence community’s shortcomings, but also offering some striking lessons for would-be intelligence analysts and policymakers, underlining the risks of unchallenged assumptions and the pitfalls of decision-making with imperfect information and political bias.