Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

What a shame. This book gives a good outline of the events of the war and what happens when politics, not military know how runs a war.

I commute 64 miles a day by car and this CD made my commute fly by. The narrator helped me keep all the general straight-- all of whom were saying in one way or another: "This isn't going to work" or "What is Plan B once Plan A fails?". I sat in my office driveway listening to "Fiasco"! I highly recomend it..........now I need to buy something else.....or wait for Tom Ricks to write a follow-up.

I wrote 'Fiasco' and was pleasantly surprised by how well it was done as an audiobook. I actually listened to it on my commute and enjoyed it. I recommend it highly.

Much of what Thomas Ricks offers in this work can be found elsewhere, the material covered in other books and articles including Mr. Ricks' own excellent coverage. That said, no other work so thoroughly reviews the data of the lead up to the Iraq war and the occupation. The author's contacts, garnered as the Washington Post's Pentagon respondent remain second to none and thus many of his sources come from within the uniformed services, both currently active and retired. What comes forward is a frightening picture of a Bush administrations hell bent on going to war and willing to go to any length to sell the policy. Mr. Ricks methodically combs through the data, showing how the administration hyped up the threat posed by Iraq while minimizing the risks. Where Bush defenders continue to accuse all those who disagree with the policy of being "Monday morning quarterbacks," Ricks shows how time and again the critics of their policy, at the time they were being implemented, were brushed aside as being defeatist. Generals like Anthony Zinni and Norman Schwarzkopf, both of whom made clear that any occupation of Iraq would be the most difficult operation undertaken by the US since WW II were accused of "not understanding" the facts. Paul Bremmer's CIA liaison's advice that disbanding the Iraqi army and debathificaiton would provoke a mass insurgency found himself ignored. More frightening still is the continual demonstration of the arrogance of power and how bureaucratic infighting in Washington led to soldiers returning home in flag draped coffins. Don Rumsfield's desire to undercut the State Department led to the rejection of all American expertise in reconstruction. Far from a coherent plan for what to do after defeating Saddam, the White House relied on an ad hoc policy. Instead of leaving it in the hands of experts, the primary job qualification for work on reconstruction seemed in most cases to be a demonstrated loyalty to the GOP. Most shocking of all, as Ricks points out, the only one to pay the price for the Administrations failings remain the grunts being wounded and killed in battle. The very fine Cobra II offers greater detail on the military failures of the current war. However, that work ends in 2003 and does not offer as greater detail on the internal policy formation that left us with the current debacle. Anyone wishing to understand where we are and how we got there must study this important work.

I've spent the better part of the past 36 hours inhaling Thomas Ricks' "Fiasco" and I have to say it is easily the best book so far produced on the Iraq War. I say this as someone who supported the original rationale for going into Iraq and who still supports the war effort. But support should never be blind and I think there's much that opponents and supporters of the war can gain from reading Mr. Ricks' "near-term history" of the conflict. He has produced a remarkable book that synthesizes a broad range of information and yet does so in an immensely readable fashion. The author is to be genuinely congratulated. For me, the book was particularly insightful in offering a cogent narrative of how the insurgency came to be. It presented a detailed inventory of the political and military mistakes of the period stretching from immediately after Baghdad's fall in the late spring of 2003, through the rise of the insurgency later that year and into the middle of 2004. Is the book perfect? No and doubtless as more time passes and as more information becomes available some of the conclusions and narratives presented here may change. But for the time being, the book is the best contemporary record of the events of the past three years in Iraq and I can't imagine it being surpassed anytime soon. I found it far more useful than the somewhat tepid "Cobra II" and the better-but-not-as-good "Assassin's Gate." What most impressed me was the way Ricks dealt honestly with the shortcoming of the US military and particularly the US Army. I have the deepest respect and admiration for those who serve, but there has been a tendency to only blame the mistakes in Iraq on the civilian political leadership (who certainly deserve their share of the blame) and to forego honest criticism of the tactics and actions of the troops in the field. Ricks does an excellent job of calling into question the wisdom and preparedness of "Big Army" to fight the type of conflict this country has been engaged in in Iraq for the past three years. As with any substantive work on an issue as politically-charged as Iraq, there will be discussion of the question of bias and motive on the part of the author. Ricks frankly writes with barely veiled contempt for the president and the secretary of defense, though Paul Bremer, General Ricardo Sanchez, and former Chairman of the Joint Staff Dick Myers come off as even bigger villains (if that's possible.) In many cases, I don't think the blame -- particularly as it relates to Bremer -- is misplaced. More to the point, Ricks' assessment of the mistakes made on the ground in Iraq are sufficiently worthwhile and thought-provoking that his "bashing" of certain officials can be tolerated. To be clear, it's not so much that I mind him assigning blame, it's more that he seems to view the handling of the Iraq war -- ironically enough -- in black-and-white terms with respect to senior political and military figures. In short, Ricks has hero