to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam's regime, and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction." Pollack predicted, "It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars." Likewise, he wrote, "we should not exaggerate the danger of casualties among American troops. U.S. forces in Bosnia have not suffered a single casualty from hostile action because they have become so attentive and skillful at force protection." Pollack is credited with persuading liberals of the case for the Iraq war. New York Times columnist Bill Keller, in supporting the Iraq war in 2003, wrote "Kenneth Pollack, the Clinton National Security Council expert whose argument for invading Iraq is surely the most influential book of this season, has provided intellectual cover for every liberal who finds himself inclining toward war but uneasy about Mr. Bush." Liberal writer Matthew Yglesias in the LA Times also attested to Pollack's influence: Of course, those of us who read Pollack's celebrated 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," and became convinced as a result that the United States needed to, well, invade Iraq in order to dismantle Saddam Hussein's advanced nuclear weapons program (the one he didn't actually have) might feel a little too bitter to once again defer to our betters. Many have criticized his support for the Invasion of Iraq, including Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who called The Threatening Storm the "most meretricious contribution" to the pre-war "debate" on military action and included it in the select bibliography section of his 2005 book The Great War for Civilisation in order to "show just how specific – and misleading – were the efforts to persuade Americans to invade." Many critics, as well as many of those who used the book to justify their support of the invasion, overlooked the more balanced presentation on the pros and cons of war to be found in The Threatening Storm. As Chris Suellentrop of Slate pointed out before the invasion on March 5, 2003: Six months after The Threatening Storm's publication, however, Pollack's book reads as much like an indictment of the Bush administration's overeagerness to go to war as it does an endorsement of it. A more appropriate subtitle