Books by Stephen C. Pelletiere

The study centers around the last Iraqi campaign, which Pelletiere argues was based upon World War II blitzkrieg tactics, but he also treats the background, the politics, and the history of the conflict, and analyzes the significance of the war to the Middle East and to the position of the United States there.

Oil and the Kurdish Question critiques the conventional narrative of the Iran-Iraq War and the associated Anfal campaign. This narrative claims that in the last two years (1987-88) of the Iran-Iraq War the Ba'thists dominated the fighting using gas attacks. According to this narrative, the Ba'thists also used gas in a fearsome campaign of extermination against the Kurds of northern Iraq. This book argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Iraqis trained hard to turn the tables on Iran in the last months of the war and won by superior generalship without the use of gas. Further, it was only when the Iranians conceded defeat that the Iraqi army went north andin the space of nine days, using conventional armssuppressed pockets of Kurdish insurgent unrest.The book also examines how publicists exploited the myth of the Kurdish holocaust as justification for America to declare war on Iraq. It exposes a scheme laid out before the war that aimed to defeat Iraq, deconstruct it, and create an autonomous Kurdish Regional Government which would then let lucrative oil concessions to interests mainly in the west. The intrigue accomplished two things: it subverted Iraq's oil nationalization law which forbade granting concessions to foreigners, and it ended Iraq's existence as a sovereign nation-state.

A former CIA analyst looks at nearly three decades of U.S. Middle East policy to examine the pervasive and too-often disastrous influence of Israel's right wing Likud party.

Ten years after the end of the Gulf War, the conflict continues with unresolved questions about economic sanctions and Iraq's participation in the oil export system.

Why has the United States become involved in so many wars in the Middle East, and why just now? What explains the extraordinary disconnect between pre-war statements by the Bush Administration and the post-war reality? How much of U.S. intelligence was wrong, and why? Why did the Bush Administration ignore warnings by senior military commanders about the difficulties they would confront in trying to occupy Iraq? Why was there virtually no pre-war planning for administering Iraq once the war was successfully concluded? Pelletiere argues that, in going to war twice against Iraq and once against Afghanistan, the United States was seeking to put a lock on its future energy supplies. In neglecting diplomacy for so long in dealing with the Gulf States, Washington was practically compelled to use force to get what it wanted.Pelletiere explores the context of events that produced the attacks of September 11, 2001, the pretext for the United States' military move into the region. He debunks the Bush Administration's claim that the United States was beset by Islamic terrorists bent on destroying western civilization and set the stage for an examination of other possible motives. Next, he details the history of U.S. involvement in the region, beginning with the discovery of oil and the pioneering efforts of American and British companies to open the region to exploration. After the OPEC Revolution, he argues, the United States would allow itself to be drawn into an arms-supplying relationship with the Shah of Iran and the military-industrial complex would become hooked on subsidies from the Gulf monarchs. Finally, after discussing the First Gulf War and recent events in Afghanistan, Pelletiere contends that these conflicts and the current war in Iraq are really part of a greater struggle between North and South, a struggle that will have significant consequences for the future of the United States.