Anatomy Of Deceit

A direct accounting of the war in the former Yugoslavia as seen through the eyes of a U.S. doctor who personally witnessed the atrocities of the war.

What happens when Washington, D.C. pundits and journalists run in the same social circles as the powerful people they cover? When the President and his administration trade press access for loyalty? You get a complicit, uncritical press greasing the skids to a brutal war, conspiring to out a CIA agent, and muddying the waters of a grand jury investigation. In the fearful aftermath of 9/11, much of America’s pride -- its free press -- became an unquestioning propaganda arm. Marcy Wheeler’s Anatomy of Deceit documents how the media promoted the Bush administration’s justification for war -- that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring weapons of mass destruction -- even though much of it was debunked. And it provides a play-by-play account of how Vice President Dick Cheney’s office first used the media to target a critic, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and then to avoid criminal charges in the CIA leak case. While the media was beating the drums of war and cozying up to the administration, citizen journalists were digging for the truth. Wheeler's compelling account tells the story, as it needs to be told -- from outside the Beltway's cocktail circuit.

Thriller.

Expository outlines that can lead to sermons or lessons filled with a deeper understanding of the truth of God's Word.

Explores self-deception and its consequences for political decision-making.

In Deceit on the Road to War, John M. Schuessler examines how U.S. presidents have deceived the American public about fundamental decisions of war and peace. Deception has been deliberate, he suggests, as presidents have sought to shift blame for war onto others in some cases and oversell its benefits in others. Such deceit is a natural outgrowth of the democratic process, in Schuessler's view, because elected leaders have powerful incentives to maximize domestic support for war and retain considerable ability to manipulate domestic audiences. They can exploit information and propaganda advantages to frame issues in misleading ways, cherry-pick supporting evidence, suppress damaging revelations, and otherwise skew the public debate to their benefit. These tactics are particularly effective before the outbreak of war, when the information gap between leaders and the public is greatest.When resorting to deception, leaders take a calculated risk that the outcome of war will be favorable, expecting the public to adopt a forgiving attitude after victory is secured. The three cases featured in the book—Franklin Roosevelt and World War II, Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, and George W. Bush and the Iraq War—test these claims. Schuessler concludes that democracies are not as constrained in their ability to go to war as we might believe and that deception cannot be ruled out in all cases as contrary to the national interest.

Despite a rich and turbulent history spanning several centuries, malingering continues to be a controversial and neglected clinical condition that has significant implications for medical, social, legal and insurance interests. Estimates of malingering - the wilful, intentional attempt to simulate or exaggerate illness in the pursuit of a consciously desired end - vary greatly, despite the fact that malingering is believed to contribute substantially to fraudulent health care and social welfare costs. There is little consensus about what would constitute a coherent assessment of malingering, and base rates have been difficult to establish. Malingering remains a difficult attribution to make not least since it falls outside the remit of the formal psychiatric classifications. Labelling a person as a malingerer however, has significant medico-legal, personal and economic ramifications for both subject and accuser. Viewed in this way, malingering is not so much illness behavior in search of a disease, as the manifestation of a conflict between personal and social values. The aim of this book is to effect an integration of the different medical, forensic, neuropsychological, legal and social perspectives. The book provides an overview of progress in disparate fields relevant to the subject, including how recent social and neuroscience findings regarding volition, intentional states and theory of mind may have implications for informing detection, management and ultimately its explanation.