Summary: Although willful ignorance about Iraq, its inhabitants, and their religion and culture play an enormous role in our humiliating defeat in our war on Iraq, our leaders made things worse by lying persistently about many crucial decisions and events. They faked the evidence that they used to support the claim that Saddam Hussein's regime was developing nuclear weapons, undercounted American casualties of the war (and refused even to estimate the number of Iraqi casualties), and misrepresented every step of the descent into chaos and civil war as a brilliant feat of American arms, presaging imminent victory. The authors recount these and several other major instances of malicious, treasonable Republican deceit.

In the closing section of the book, they enumerate some of the lies that are already beginning to appear to explain away our defeat or to push the blame for it away from the Republicans (“We didn't really fight to win,” “The liberals betrayed us,” etc.).