{"id":37,"date":"2008-07-26T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2008-07-26T17:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2009-04-07T05:03:02","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T12:03:02","slug":"iraq-policy-perceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"Iraq: Policy &#038; Perceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The retired military friend who recommended <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ghost Wars<\/span> also suggested <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0934742995?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=relaxandhavef-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0934742995\">Iraq: Policy and Perceptions<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=relaxandhavef-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0934742995\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> by Richard J. Schmierer as a good primer on Iraq.\u00a0 The author is a member of the Senior Foreign Service with extensive experience in public diplomacy in the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0 The book offered a wide survey of the issues related to Iraq and our war there.\u00a0 Schmierer also writes about the changes in the political environment with the rise of the non-state players (terrorists) and the effects of the Information Age on Middle Eastern society.\u00a0 One of the early chapters also has a lot of recommendations in it for other books on Iraq, broken down with descriptions of good military books, good human interest books, good political books, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, it was an easy book to read with a lot of helpful information, written in a pleasant, serious style.\u00a0 It was a good primer.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re interested in starting to read about Iraq, I agree with my friend that you should track down a copy of this book.<\/p>\n<p>P.S.\u00a0 Pearse and Catherine (wherever you are), thanks for serving in Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The retired military friend who recommended Ghost Wars also suggested Iraq: Policy and Perceptions by Richard J. Schmierer as a good primer on Iraq. The author is a member of the Senior Foreign Service with extensive experience in public diplomacy in the Middle East. The book offered a wide survey of the issues related to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[10,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}