Hocus POTUS Book

THE CATCH-22 OF THE IRAQ WAR

What’s driving the ultra-dedicated State Department staffers nuts in the former Republican Palace in Baghdad’s Green Zone? Is it the rising insurgency? The lack of power and water? The tide of utter chaos? The sinking feeling that the adventure is going south?

No.

What bothers them is WMDs. Without one, how can their beloved POTUS (security shorthand for President of the United States) justify this mess? Not finding a single WMD to justify it all is making POTUS look bad. Real bad. Enter Rick Gannon, Ambassador Goodhair’s advisor-turned-war profiteer, recently imprisoned but now on the lam. Little does the Ambassador and his staff know that Rick––along with his pickup band of brigands, including a homesick Air National Guard pilot, a sourpuss Defense Intelligence agent, a jaded TV cameraman, and an aging Iraqi soccer star––may hold the key to POTUS’ salvation. Written by the man who covered Ambassador Paul Bremer in Iraq for Time magazine, Hocus POTUS is a novel rich in real-life details and thinly veiled portrayals. It's also a hysterically irreverent—and masterfully crafted—antiwar satire that will keep you guessing to the end.

Publishers Weekly

This rollicking political farce from former Timeand Newsweekcorrespondent MacPherson is set between the fall of Baghdad and the capture of Saddam. Roguish hero Rich Gannon has advised the Bremer-like proconsul in Iraq, Ambassador Taylor, that the looting is serious, that the Iraqi army shouldn't be disbanded, and that the WMD are a figment of the White House's imagination. Taylor's assistant soon has Rich on a cargo plane to remote Erbil. Gannon, ever the improviser, quickly organizes a detour to Turkey for a discrete heist-but Rich and his cohort are arrested. Held in Iraq's National Stadium, Rich & Co. plot escape and a new scheme: faking a WMD to sell to the Coalition Authority. Meanwhile, other plots are hatching in the Green Zone among the ambassador's fraying staff. MacPherson, author of the nonfiction Afghanistan report Robert's Ridge, unfurls this knowing and indignant tale with ease, setting it against the background of Iraqi woe and of nod-wink romance. The book's caper set pieces are too garish, and weak characterization fails Rich in particular. But MacPherson effectively portrays the Green Zone as a zoo of ambition, backbiting and incompetence. (July)

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