Fiasco

The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Thomas E. Ricks

The US-led invasion of Iraq has had many critics since it began, but this explosive book shows that the most eloquent critics of all are at the top of the American military itself

With remarkable access to key figures throughout the armed forces - talking on and off the record - Thomas Ricks gives a gripping account of the entire Iraq fiasco from its origins in the botched war of 1991 to the ever more disastrous occupation in 2006. Cutting through the headlines and spin, this is the first book to give us a true picture of the reality on the ground, through the words of the people there - from commanders to intelligence officers, army doctors to ordinary soldiers. Providing eyewitness accounts that contradict the official stories and figures, they give a chilling picture of the deceit, stupidity, wishful thinking, lack of forward planning and total intellectual failure of those behind the invasion. The result is an extraordinary new insight into the plight of ordinary soldiers doing nightmarish jobs, and the real nature of the fighting in Iraq.

Thomas E. Ricks is the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent. Until the end of 1999 he had covered the US military for The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. Thomas E. Ricks has been a member of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting. He has lived in Afghanistan and in Hong Kong and is the author of Making the Corps and A Soldier's Duty.