Gun-for-hire James 'Ash' Ashcroft thought he'd left Iraq behind. Last time he only got out alive thanks to the bravery of his interpreter and friend Sammy. But now a call for help means Ash must once again face the chaos of war-torn Baghdad - and this time there's no pay cheque. Abandoned by the occupying Coalition Forces, Sammy and his family face certain death at the hands of the Shia-dominated Iraqi Police and the death squads that roam the streets unless Ash and his team can get in and get them to safety over the border. This is the action-packed story of their audacious escape from Baghdad. It is a gripping account of the chaos of war, where the only thing that can be relied upon is the bond between former brothers-in-arms.

The author who spent twenty years developing Iraq's atomic weapon, recounts his life in Saddam Hussein's inner circle and his daring flight to the West. The book delves into the darkest corners of a regime ruled by a volatile, brutal leader, Dr. Hamza, the only defector who has lived to write a firsthand portrait of Iraq, also presents an unprecedented portrait of Saddam -- his drunken rages, his women, his cold-blooded murder of underlings, and his unrivaled power. If pushed to the wall, Saddam will use the bomb that Dr. Hamza helped create. This is an account of what he endured in Iraq to his harrowing flight across three continents and his first encounter with skeptical CIA agents who turned him away.

An unforgettable trip from the foundations of physical and biological existence to the psycho-social maladies currently undermining human prospects, "Escape from Quantopia" exposes the twin failings of science and capitalism, the double helix of the modern world. Prefigured by the deranged imperative to subsume nature and consciousness to deterministic equations, imperial America is killing the earth in the quest to dominate it. Why do elites pursue policies ultimately harmful even to themselves? How did warfare, whether military or economic, take on a life of its own beyond the reach of reason and compassion? Making the case for insanity at the group level, the author finds the basis of collective memory and mind in the pioneering work of CS Peirce, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake and Lee Smolin. Whether arising from primordial chemical soup or the unexamined recesses of the human mind, living systems tend to self-perpetuate. In light of the organic underpinnings of contemporary crises, Ted Dace proposes "organic socialism" as the best hope for establishing a new order of thought and life.

Mission to Kill Saddam Hussein is a Novel about severe atrocities from an over zealous dictator who caused a stir that brought in the Calvary! A soldiers' daily survival in a time of war & wait and the effects of war on both a soldier and spouse.

Shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, psychotherapist Rash and his girlfriend Kayla, fearing a biological attack on the U.S. by Islamic terrorists, flee from vulnerable Ann Arbor, Michigan, to the presumed safety of Oak, a small rural town in eastern Ohio. While there the couple attempts to resolve problems in their testy relationship, but this is complicated by a local militia leader who tries to recruit Rash. The leader also recruits an expert to create a lethal virus that will target specific ethnic groups, but it turns out that the expert has a grievance-driven agenda of his own.

This book is dedicated to all patriots - past, present, and future, and especially to the modern day patriots of America -- the brave American men and women in our armed forces who fought and died and are fighting and dying this day in Afghanistan and Iraq so that terrorists and madmen ... will not be able to hurt our country again, not only with hijacked airplanes but also with chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. And also let us never, forget the brave firefighters and policemen of New York City who gave their lives on September 11 so that others might live.

A provocative view of economic growth in the Third World argues that the countries that have achieved steady economic growth—including future economic superpowers India and China—have done so because they have resisted the American ideology of free markets. The American government has been both miracle worker and villain in the developing world. From the end of World War II until the 1980s poor countries, including many in Africa and the Middle East, enjoyed a modicum of economic growth. New industries mushroomed and skilled jobs multiplied, thanks in part to flexible American policies that showed an awareness of the diversity of Third World countries and an appreciation for their long-standing knowledge about how their own economies worked. Then during the Reagan era, American policy changed. The definition of laissez-faire shifted from "Do it your way," to an imperial "Do it our way." Growth in the developing world slowed, income inequalities skyrocketed, and financial crises raged. Only East Asian economies resisted the strict prescriptions of Washington and continued to boom. Why? In Escape from Empire, Alice Amsden argues provocatively that the more freedom a developing country has to determine its own policies, the faster its economy will grow. America's recent inflexibility—as it has single-mindedly imposed the same rules, laws, and institutions on all developing economies under its influence—has been the backdrop to the rise of two new giants, China and India, who have built economic power in their own way. Amsden describes the two eras in America's relationship with the developing world as "Heaven" and "Hell"—a beneficent and politically savvy empire followed by a dictatorial, ideology-driven one. What will the next American empire learn from the failure of the last? Amsden argues convincingly that the world—and the United States—will be infinitely better off if new centers of power are met with sensible policies rather than hard-knuckled ideologies. But, she asks, can it be done?

Politics & government.

Clientelism and Implementing Social Security Programmes in Post-conflict Iraqi Kurdistan Region investigates social policy in a politically less-developed entity, and examines the mainstream top-down and bottom-up models of policy implementation in light of a detailed study of the Kurdistan Regional Government. In addition, it introduces the innovative “clientelistic model of policy implementation”, a political and preferential tool which utilises a public/nationalistic dichotomy in social welfare provision. The book argues that politicians in the Kurdistan region deal with social policy programmes according to their political preferences, attaching importance to policies on the basis of the way they feel about those social programmes and interest groups concerned. As such, as it stands, policy implementation is subject to interference by politicians and high government officials under the pretext of supporting and monitoring the way such policy is implemented. Through an investigation of the most prominent actors in the implementation of social security programmes, this book demonstrates how beneficiaries of these programmes can themselves become focal points in the implementation process. Indeed, within the Kurdistan Regional Government’s social policy context today, the benefits of social security schemes are being distributed based on the socio-political status of recipients, not on their socio-economic conditions and needs.