The subject of this book is ostensibly US foreign policy since September 11 2001. Its real purpose, though, is to show that my position as a neoconservative has been deeply misunderstood and that I have never been in the slightest bit inconsistent. I have worked with some of the finest neocons - Paul Wolfowitz and Albert Wohlstetter among them - and was proud to consider myself part of their tradition. Yet even though I signed a letter urging the Clinton administration to take a more hawkish line against Iraq in 1998, I was never persuaded of the rationale for the Iraq war in 2003.