When I wrote Iraq and the International Oil System—Why America Went to War in the Gulf, I anticipated that it might generate discussion. At the same time, I trusted that the debate would at least be honest. With Isamal al Khafaji's review of my book it is anything but that. Khafaji not only puts words in my mouth; he twists my meaning in several places and contrives arguments to use against me based on highly selective readings of the text. He accuses me, for example, of trying to exonerate the United States from complicity in the Mossadegh coup. Nowhere in the book do I do that. I say that, under Truman, the United States tried to work with the Iranian leader, but Eisenhower was determined to get rid of him, and once that decision was made Mossadegh's fate was sealed. Khafaji says I present no evidence to support my argument about trying to preserve Mossadegh in power. What is the long discussion of the Harriman Mission if not evidence?

Stephen Pelletiere is disappointed that the debate about his book that he had anticipated did not turn out to be an honest one because of my review. Unfortunately, he is unable to realize that the quality of what he had written could not possibly generate a debate in the scholarly sense of the term. When I was asked by the book editor of IJMES to review Pelletiere's book, I immediately found that my job instead was to navigate through a mountain of mistaken facts, historical data, and concepts, whose aim was to reconstruct a biased and apologetic narrative. Nevertheless, I did my best to present an honest and fair judgment of the book.