This book exposes the lies, crimes and corruptions of the American elite, aided and bolstered by big media conglomerates.

One of the reasons for the American invasion of Iraq was because Saddam Hussein used poison gas in 1988 against the Kurdish town of Halabja. The US Senate overwhelmingly passed sanctions against Iraq in response. The sanctions were squelched by the Reagan and Bush I Administrations, because Saddam Hussein was an ally and there was money to be made for US corporations in Iraq.

The New York Times made a great show of regret, corrections and mea culpas after reporter Jayson Blair was exposed as having falsified several stories. No such official behavior occurred after reporter Judith Miller was found to have relied on fraudulent intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress in several front page stories.

Citing a desire to protect the American people from seeing unpleasant images on TV, one would have to look very hard to find ANY picture of dead or dying Iraqis, or anguished relatives in hospitals, on American TV. A much more accurate reason for such a decision is to control what Americans see of the war. It's ""supposed"" to be a clean, videogame sort of war, full of extremely accurate US weapons, not a place where innocent civilians die in all sorts of brutal and graphic ways.

In a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (the sweeping education reform bill), secondary schools are required to give military recruiters access to facilities, along with contact information for all students. The penalty for not doing so is a cutoff of federal aid. There is an opt-out provision for schools. When one school in New York made use of it, only 43 out of 1,200 students let their names be sent to military recruiters.

This book also covers a myriad of other subjects, from the USA PATRIOT Act to war profiteering, to what happens to those who don't support the war, to Mumia Abu-Jamal, to East Timor, to US Army psyops used against Americans, among others. It is better than excellent. It is full of things that will never be covered in the mainstream media. To educate yourself on what America is really like, this is a fine place to start. It is highly recommended.