As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending this administration from the podium of the White House briefing room. While what I said at the time was based on my own sense of the truth, it has since become clear that some of what I said was a horrific distortion of the truth. Throughout these pages, I have tried to capture some of the truths that the forces within the White House wanted to suppress or obscure... History seems poised to confirm what most Americans have concluded today-that the decision to invade Iraq was a grave strategic mistake. No one, including me, can predict how the war will be viewed decades from now, when its full impact can be fully comprehended. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, but the Iraq war was unnecessary. Waging an unnecessary war was a grave mistake. But I-by recalling everything that happened throughout the Bush administration-have come to believe that a far greater mistake was made, and that was the decision to move away from honesty and frankness at a time when we most needed both.