This is the Iraq war as it really started, amid lies, confusion and profound distrust between the United States and its Iraqi allies. Charles Glass, who first covered the Kurds in 1974 and was in Iraq for their failed rebellion in 1991, depicts the tense epoch that sowed the seeds of America’s inevitable failure there.

          The Northern Front is the dramatic eyewitness account of the machinations of Iraqi leaders — Ahmad Chalabi, Abdel Aziz Hakim, Massoud Barzani and Jelal Talabani — to control the country before their opponents seized the initiative. Glass recounts what went wrong when the US, with Britain in tow, imposed its will on a people unlikely to accept foreign designs for their future. He indicts international media conglomerates that failed to tell the truth when public debate could have prevented the deaths and destructions that came with war.