The second part of this book changes from being a how-I-won-the-war memoir to being a nobody-would-listen-to-me tale. The trouble is that the brave voice of dissent who was "not shy" of pushing his own views in the first, good war becomes a largely mute Cassandra in the second, bad war. He does tell his boss of his misgivings (and now publishes a cautionary 2002 memo about post-war Iraq), but Mr Powell and the entire State Department are isolated. Eventually, at the start of 2003-the war began on March 19th-he decides he must act. But his "last-ditch effort" is simply "at slowing things down", and this bold venture takes the form of typing another memo to his boss. This Mr Powell reads and tucks in his pocket, where it may still be today.

In truth, wise and prescient though he often seemed, Mr Haass was only "60/40 against going to war". It took some unconnected gibes, notably his wife's comment that he had become an "enabler", to make him see that he was being used, and in July 2003 he slipped away from the administration. His book will be of some interest to students of the Washington bureaucracy, but of much more to those who worry about when public servants should resign. It is a tale of a good man doggedly working for a bad end, an end that was not simply a war of choice, or a preventive war of dubious legality, but a war of revenge. Not a great paragraph in the CV.

... contd.