The Dream Palace of the Empire

Fouad Ajami is inescapably part of the story of the American adventure in Iraq. In the run-up to the March 2003 invasion, he was one of the most influential intellectual proponents of war, frequently appearing on talk shows and writing in publications including The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, and Foreign Affairs. Vice President Dick Cheney even cited Ajami in his August 2002 speech to the annual meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. A few lines after proclaiming, 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,' the vice president