Columnist Takes Critical Look At Iraq Policy

By: Dave Astor The Philadelphia Inquirer is publishing "Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq" on Sept. 30.

The book is by Trudy Rubin, who writes the "Worldview" foreign-affairs column for the Inquirer. She was one of the first journalists to write extensively and critically about Bush-administration policy in Iraq, predicting many of the problems that later came to pass. And, because Rubin has spent a lot of time in Iraq and has many contacts there, she is one of the few journalists who knows about the situation from both the American and Iraqi perspective.

Her book features "Worldview" columns from July 2002 though June 2004 as well as additional material. Included are suggestions for what could be done to improve the Iraq situation, which many have called a quagmire.

Rubin (http://www.trudyrubin.com) is also a member of the Inquirer editorial board. Prior to joining that paper in 1983, she was Mideast correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. Rubin was a 2001 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her Inquirer columns on the Mideast.