Throughout, the book entertains, and provides evidences for, the notion that key administration officials were set on invading Iraq and that the proffered reasons for the invasion—such as national security threats like the presence of WMD in Iraq—were pretexts rather than actual motivations for going to war.
The book argues that key government officials were determined to invade Iraq, and that the justifications given for the invasion—such as concerns about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—were deceptive rather than genuine motivations for war.