Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005

by Thomas E. Ricks

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book

"Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair

The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq

Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq, drawing on exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Military Fiction, War, Middle East, Military History

496 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2006

About the author

Thomas Edwin "Tom" Ricks (born September 25, 1955) is an American journalist who writes on defense topics. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. He writes a blog at ForeignPolicy.com and is a member of the Center for a New American Security, a defense policy think tank.

He lectures widely to the military and is a member of Harvard University's Senior Advisory Council on the Project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. He has reported on military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Ricks is author of five books: the bestselling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq (2006), its follow-up The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (2009), The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (2012), the novel A Soldier's Duty (2001), and Making the Corps (1997) (from wikipedia)

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Ricks - image from the Bangor Daily News

Fiasco offers a very detailed look into the disaster that has been the US invasion of Iraq. For those of us who have read more than a few books on the subject there is an unavoidable repetition of information seen elsewhere, but there is sufficient new material to justify one’s time. Ricks covers the range of errors from the political to the strategic to the tactical to the diplomatic and offered analysis as to what went wrong and why. But he also shows where lessons were learned from recent experience (although one of the major failures of the war was an unwillingness to learn from prior conflicts), and tells of success stories where they occurred. I learned more about some of the military people involved in the war (Generals Franks, Petraeus, Odierno, Sanchez, McMaster) than I knew before and that alone was worth the price. The book offers an excellent range of subject matter and is written in a very accessible manner.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author at Task & Purpose and Twitter

Thomas Ricks’ work at
-----The Atlantic
-----The Daily Beast
-----Foreign Policy Research Institute

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

The failure of the 1991 Gulf War to take out Saddam Hussein left a small contingent of hawks looking for redress. Most notable among these was then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz who reported to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. As a policy of containment took hold, Wolfowitz complained for more action against Saddam but in the Bush 41 administration he did not find a receptive ear from Cheney. Wolfowitz’s disdain for containment may have been due to the loss of most of his Polish extended family in the holocaust. Wolfowitz compared Saddam to Hitler and his security forces to the Gestapo. Another advocate for action was Donald Rumsfeld who along with Wolfowitz, and John Bolton belonged to an advocacy group that issued a letter to President Clinton in 1998 demanding regime change in Iraq. Even though in the 2000 presidential election Bush and Cheney doubled down on a non-interventionist policy, Bush made Donald Rumsfeld Defense Secretary and Wolfowitz Deputy Defense Secretary. Initially, however, Wolfowitz’s only strong interventionist ally in the Bush administration was “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff.

9/11 changed everything. Rumsfeld became disillusioned with the intelligence community and again sided with Wolfowitz. Then the New York Times chimed in with reporting by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Judith Miller claiming Iraq had a WMD program housed in multiple hidden sites. None of it was true, but it had a big impact. Bush made sure everyone knew that his administration’s attitude had changed in his 2002 state of the union speech when he declared Iraq along with North Korea and Iran to be “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world…time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather.” Cheney reiterated in August 2002 saying “We must take the battle to the enemy.” claiming “There is no doubt” Iraq has WMD.” This would be proven false and to have been based on cherry picked bits of intelligence selected to prove what the hardliners already believed. Cheney radically changed after 9/11, perhaps from fear of a repetition, but also perhaps because he was suffering from serious heart problems. The hardliners reinforced each other and Cheney in particular intimidated the intelligence community. Cheney’s pressure culminated in CIA Director George Tenet releasing a made to order National Intelligence Estimate summary supporting the WMD case that heavily influenced President Bush. The detailed report was far less clear than the summary. In September 2002, NY Times columnist Judith Miller struck again this time on page one writing that Saddam Hussein was actively searching for A-bomb parts, later proven false.

By the fall of 2002 with the decision to go to war made and Congress offering no serious opposition, Rumsfeld began planning. Unlike Cheney in the Gulf War Rumsfeld overrode his military scaling back required force estimates, particularly for the aftermath. Calling it planning is really a misnomer. Inexperienced civilian hardliners put together PowerPoints on what to expect. Input from experienced people in the State Department or military was largely ignored. Those that objected such as knowledgeable former generals Shinseki and Zinni were vilified. The official line was that the troops would be welcomed as liberators, quickly turn the government back over to the Iraqis, and leave. It was all politically generated and naïve. In February 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell with Tenet sitting behind him gave a speech at the UN offering “evidence” of Iraqi WMD. This abysmal low point in his career came about because he accepted the CIA summary and unverified input from the administration, all of which was crafted to support a decision already made.

The US attacked in March 2003. Taking Baghdad proceeded pretty much as planned. Little else did. The Iraqi troops didn’t defect in mass and support the Americans as the administration had predicted. Once defeated, most waited to see what the Americans would do. Some melted into the civilian population and began organizing resistance starting by stocking up on arms that Saddam had stashed around the country. General Franks did not take responsibility for what followed in Iraq after his “victory” in taking Baghdad. The U.S. had no plan to administer Iraq after Saddam’s fall. U.S. forces didn’t secure the borders, seize Saddam’s arm stashes or maintain order. Chaos ensued with widespread looting and vandalism. American troops never expected to be an occupation force, for which they were severely undermanned. Some were busy hunting for WMDs that didn’t exist. Others were getting ready to go home as they had been promised. Iraqis figured Americans didn’t care or simply were incapable of taking control. They soon lost any faith they may have had in their “liberators”. Meanwhile on May 1, 2003 Bush was quick to claim victory flying in a combat jet onto the deck of an aircraft carrier over which a banner claimed “mission accomplished”.

In May 2003 as the situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, Paul Bremer was appointed to head the Coalition Provisional Authority. He technically reported to Rumsfeld, but Rumsfeld thought he reported to the White House National Security Council. It didn’t matter because Bremer did what he wanted. General Franks was replaced by General Sanchez who reported to Central Command in Tampa which reported to Rumsfeld. No single person in Iraq was in charge and Bremer and Sanchez could barely stand each other. Bremer wasted no time disenfranchising Iraqis. First he fired all “senior” Baathist party members from government run organizations. That put 85,000 people who knew how to operate the country’s infrastructure on the street without jobs. Next he dissolved the Iraqi Army, putting 385,000 men on the streets with no income and plenty of time to express their resentment. Then he let go the 285,000 working for the Interior Ministry which included police and security forces. The U.S. Army had not been notified in advance of these decisions. Even Rumsfeld didn’t seem to know about these decisions. Bremer’s actions ensured the occupation would be a long one and proved to be an excellent way to get the Iraqi insurgency up and running. Bombing and sniping increased and was widespread within a couple of months. But back in Washington the Bush administration denied that there was a serious problem and still expressed confidence that that they would find WMD. In July when asked about Iraqis attacking U. S. forces Bush said, “My answer is: Bring ‘em on.” A year later the Islamic Jihad Army replied, “Have you another challenge.”

Bombings increased. Particularly significant was the bomb laden truck that crashed into the UN mission in Iraq in August 2003 killing twenty-two and wounding seventy. The blast broke windows a half mile away. The UN reduced its presence to a token and ceased being the mediator between the U.S. and Shiite leaders. Other international organizations took note and began leaving. The insurgency was being strategic cutting Americans off from constructive contact with Iraqis. American forces were a hammer in search of a nail. The U.S. employed counterproductive conventional war tactics with armored vehicles patrolling through Iraqi neighborhoods, mass roundups and imprisonments, nighttime raids on personal residences humiliating men in front of their families, physical and mental abuse of detainees; all guaranteed to alienate everyday Iraqis. As Iraqi animosity intensified, the IED, the low tech roadside bomb, became the weapon of choice for the insurgents. The IED was very effective. It was responsible for one-third of U.S. troop deaths in the insurgency’s first year and two-thirds of casualties requiring medical evacuation out of Iraq. IED attacks would steadily increase throughout 2004. The IED further isolated U.S. troops who became very reluctant to venture out among the Iraqis except as ordered on combat style missions. General Sanchez provided little central direction thus area commanders used varying tactics, some particularly harsh and alienating but a few such as General Petraeus in the Iraqi north employed proven counterinsurgency measures to good effect. Counterinsurgency calls for winning over the people by engaging with them and respecting them, the opposite of what most U.S. divisions were doing.

In early October 2003 Bush still had the blinders on saying “The situation is improving on a daily basis in Iraq. People are freer, the security situation is getting better.” That month the Ramadan offensive got underway. The insurgents sent a message to the U.S. by launching rockets into the heavily protected American Green Zone. Rockets struck the hotel where Wolfowitz was staying killing an Army officer on the floor below. They also sent a message to Iraqis working with the Americans assassinating one of the Baghdad mayors. Violence dramatically escalated to 45 attacks per day on American forces. U.S. helicopters were shot down. 60 U.S. troops were killed in two weeks. All in all by November more U.S. troops had been killed from May to November 2003 than in the U.S. invasion. Rumsfeld and the Bush administration’s plans still called for reducing U.S. troop strength based on their belief that things were going well but now doubts crept in. Finally Rumsfeld changed his tune saying publically “We’re in a low-intensity war that needs to be won.” Even the capture of Saddam Hussain in December didn’t help. Many Iraqi’s felt now they could join the resistance since they would no longer be fighting for Saddam.

The U.S. Army was given the unexpected role of administering Iraqi prisons including tens of thousands of detainees collected in the growing number of cordon and sweep operations. While targeting known insurgents, many innocent suspects were routinely detained in the sweeps and sent off to prison. Abu Ghraib, the main prison, was overwhelmed. Prisoners waited weeks and months to be interrogated. Many were simply lost in the system. The reserve MP troops running the prison were not properly trained or supervised and abuse was prevalent, not that abuse was confined to the prisons. Individual field divisions varied widely in their treatment of detained Iraqis. Detainees were frequently subject to violence and humiliation before entering prison. Ricks spends many pages describing the myriad ways prisoners were mistreated, injured and sometimes killed and much became public. Then the news about abu Ghraib broke in April 2004. Americans, Iraqis and people around the world were stunned. Military leaders could claim they were unaware of much of the abuse in the field and prisons, largely because many commanders had let it be known that they didn’t want to hear about it.

As 2004 unfolded the Iraqi insurgency hardened and spread. Now the insurgents were better equipped and experienced. But U.S. forces rotated out after one year. Their replacements had to learn all over again how war in Iraq was fought. It wasn’t the war they were trained to fight. The few good working relationships between Iraqi and U.S. forces were lost. A significant failure of those leaving was not properly training, equipping and supporting Iraqi forces the U.S. had recruited. This was essential given the inability of Americans to understand and deal with people of a different culture and language. Another failure that undercut attempts to implement counterinsurgency doctrine was not providing security for the majority of Iraqis who were not insurgents. The average Iraqi was terrified by uncontrolled crime. Kidnappings, robberies and rapes were commonplace. If the U.S. couldn’t protect them, better to align with the insurgents. Another failure was not getting basic services up and running. What were Iraqis with no electricity to think when they saw the bright lights emanating from the green zone?

In March 2004 Fallujah exploded. A group of Blackwater security contractors bypassed a marine checkpoint, were ambushed, dismembered, hung from a bridge, then burned to cheering crowds. General Mattis and his Marines had taken over from the army in Fallujah just days earlier. Mattis saw this as a ploy by the insurgents to draw them into a major battle. Mattis who had trained his troops in counterinsurgency tactics wanted to wait then go after just the insurgents responsible to maintain relations with city residents. He and his military bosses including Sanchez were overruled. President Bush demanded major action immediately to offset the images on TV. Without time to gather intelligence the marines went in clearing the city block by block in intense fighting. The fighting spread to nearby Ramadi, then Shiite militias attacked the south of Iraq and in Shiite enclaves in Baghdad. Sunni and Shiite attacks spread to other cities. Attacks on convoys increased sharply. Iraqi troops that Americans had recruited refused to fight other Iraqis. In April President Bush inexplicably said “Most of Fallujah is returning to normal”. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The marines were forced by Bush to turn the city back over to those they had been fighting, so he could claim victory. The war strategy was being directed politically and ineptly from the White House. Iraq was on fire, the insurgents were winning battles and the people fell in line. At one U.S. battalion HQ, a sign read “Dilbert of the Day: The key to happiness is self-delusion.”

Ricks goes on to describe many other battles. As 2004 rolled into summer both sides improved their tactics, but the U.S. still lacked a strategy to win or end the war echoing Viet Nam. Special Forces were not being used effectively, but given the debacle of conventional warfare in 2004, by 2005 they would be seen as the answer. Special Forces were designed to engage in small scale precise actions designed to eliminate the enemy without alienating the people. By 2005 two pillars of the rationale for invasion were laid to rest. There were no WMD and no linkage between Saddam Hussain’s regime and al Qaeda. The third pillar of the rationale, liberation, also looked incredibly weak. After abu Ghraib and the toll of destruction and death experienced by everyday Iraqis how could it be said they were better off? The New York Times and other newspapers that had lent support to the war hawks changed their tune. Congress chimed in and began criticizing the administration for the handling of the war. The fallaciousness of Judith Miller’s reporting was exposed and she left the Times in 2005. In mid-2004 Bremer and General Sanchez were replaced. The new leadership began the transition to counterinsurgency tactics. In November 2004 the second battle of Fallujah began. This time with three times the number of troops, months of planning and the use of Special Operations, the marines took the city in fierce methodical block-by-block house-to-house combat. Much of the fighting was at close quarters, but the marines also fired four thousand artillery rounds and ten thousand mortar shells supplemented by ten tons of bombs dropped from the air. Two thousand buildings in Fallujah were destroyed and ten thousand damaged. The battle was important to show that the insurgents were not the inevitable winners, but the destruction of Fallujah was hardly going to endear the residents to their “liberators”. The death of residents was minimized since almost all left the city before the battle began.

In 2005 the insurgency became more sophisticated and expanded. The U.S. began implementing new tactics that were anathema in 2003. This is where Ricks leaves us, the book published in 2006. The takeaways are pretty obvious. A politically driven disastrous war was entered into by an administration motivated by paranoid beliefs, an administration that isolated itself ignoring experienced and knowledgeable input, an administration that bought into any story that supported its preconceived notions, an administration that could never admit it made mistakes, an administration living in a delusion. Ricks ends by exploring possible scenarios for the future of Iraq. He considers civil and regional war as possibilities. Many of these scenarios and more are still possible as our latest president know-it-all tinkers with forces he doesn’t understand in the Middle East, maintaining America’s involvement in the Yemini Civil War and taunting Iran. Reading how the Bush administration drove America to war in Iraq sends a chill down my spine when I think about how our current president employs the same modus-operandi.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there is lots of detail provided in this aptly titled book about the fiasco that has been the US adventure in Iraq, that isn’t really the main point of this book or the reason why anyone should read it. It is also not the main lesson to be gained from reading it. This book is, more than anything else, an extended meditation on the central importance that military strategy ought to have played in the preparations, execution and (most importantly) the ‘peace’ that was to have followed the invasion of Iraq.

To make this plain, early in the book an important definition is provided:

“ …strategy. That is a grand-sounding word, and it is frequently misused by laymen as a synonym for tactics. In fact, strategy has a very different and quite simple meaning that flows from just one short set of questions. Who are we, and what are we ultimately trying to do here? How will we do it, and what resources and means will we employ in doing it? The four answers give rise to one’s strategy. Ideally, one’s tactics will then follow from them – that is, this is who we are, this is the outcome we wish to achieve, this is how we aim to do it, and this is what we will use to do it. But addressing the questions well can be surprisingly difficult, and if the answers are incorrect or incomplete, or the goals listed not reachable, then the consequences can be disastrous.”

As someone once said, strategy is the science, tactics the art. The failures in Iraq were in both science and art – but the reasons for these failures are placed squarely on the failure of strategy and leadership.

The fact is repeatedly made that the US was never quite sure who the ‘we’ were in this conflict and therefore made repeated mistakes in understanding what ‘we’ were supposed to be doing in Iraq and therefore what it would take to do it.

There is a wonderful part where it is explained that one of the major ‘strategies’ was that a truly international force would spontaneously assemble to manage the peace – when this miracle assembly of an international force did not eventuate there quite simply was no Plan B.

The central link to all of these mistakes was the leadership in Washington who so strongly believed their own version of reality that they simply could not conceive the possibility of their being wrong. A truly stupid person is someone who can never admit to being wrong, ever. And this maxim has never held more true than it did in Washington throughout the Bush Administration’s handling of the Iraq invasion. No amount of evidence from the field was ever allowed to stand in the way of the absolute conviction that everything was going along swimmingly and working out to plan.

If, like me, you would gladly eat Bill Gates alive for inflicting PowerPoint on the world – this book will help you to justify your loathing. It seemed that orders were rarely given from the Pentagon other than in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. Oh Microsoft, you have much to answer for.

Before the War I saw an interview on Australian television with a military historian of some description. He was asked what will happen if it turns out that no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq, no chemical weapons plants, no stores of biological weapons? (People were already wondering why these weapons hadn’t been used against the forces while they were assembled on the Iraqi boarder – rather than waiting for these to invade when it would seem a bit too late) The guy responded (in much the way I would have responded, I guess) in a way that utterly confirmed every cynics deepest fears by saying that the US would either find WMD or the US military would have to ‘manufacture’ them. Either way, it was simply not an option to invade Iraq and then not find weapons of mass destruction – that much was abundantly clear.

When I was younger I liked to believe that somewhere in the US there were a group of conspirators – maybe the CIA or perhaps something even more shadowy and secret – who would sit around a table (and maybe that table would even be round) and develop plans for total world domination. I couldn’t say if they sat with cats on their knees that they stroked constantly or even if they had revolving bookcases where those who sought to undermine US interests would be brought to be punished or even if this punishment would involve large numbers of piranha. All I was sure of was that someone was in-charge and someone knew what was going on, and when stuff happened it happened for a reason of their choosing – and that reason was designed to always further US interests.

I imagine some people might well think that this was a terrible and frightening vision of the world and of US foreign policy. I guess they would even be grateful that I have been proven wrong. I’m not so sure that I am glad I’ve been proven wrong. I still haven’t quite gotten over the shock of Bush effectively saying, “Well heck, we’ve looked and looked, but I’ll be damned if we can find those WMDs anywhere. Oh well. I’d probably say C'est la vie, but I hate those damn cheese eating surrender monkeys so much I’ll just have to say ‘at least we’re all free’.”

It is one thing to mess around with the world when you have a plan – but to do so when the full extent of your post-invasion plan is, “Once we’ve kick in the door the people who live there will be so delighted to see us that they’re bound to throw a party” is terrifying. I think I would prefer the guy with the cat to be quite honest.

There were parts of this book where it was clear that if there had been a strategy to win the peace in Iraq, that is, if US soldiers had not so consistently alienated the civilian population, then things might have worked out quite differently. My favourite quote was from a soldier who said that the only things the Iraqis understood were force and violence. Given the soldier was unable to speak any of the local language and had no awareness of the local culture that he was slamming his boot into the face of, his assessment was probably completely accurate – the only way he could possibly make himself understood was by smashing someone and nearly frightening them to death. That this could not be in the long-term interests of the invading power hardly needs to be said. Or maybe it needs to be said over and over and over again – I can’t decide which.

Not everyone in Iraq, not even all of those in the leadership of the US forces, comes out of this book badly. General Petraeus seems like a man with his head screwed on properly and one of the very few people of any authority who comes out of this book reasonably well. Many people (soldiers, invariable) understood early on in the piece that they were fighting an insurgency and therefore knew that what was needed was to use counter-insurgency tactics to win the hearts and minds of the local population – that they needed to do whatever it took to not further alienate the locals. That those who ought to have been providing the strategy to facilitate this understanding were in fact actively undermining any talk of an insurgency meant that any hope of a coordinated effort that followed an effective strategy was doomed to failure. When those with the task of providing leadership run around saying that every American soldier killed is proof that things are getting better (I guess the logic being: its counter-intuitive, so therefore it must be right) can’t but have made those on the ground feel increasingly cynical and dispirited. As someone said – we will win every battle here and still end up losing the war, because we aren’t fighting the kind of war that would allow us to win. As you can see, this book’s long meditation on the importance of strategy continues from start to finish.

It is interesting to note that every aim stated prior to going to war by the Bush administration has subsequently failed to be realised. If you wanted to believe in a God that finds ironic ways to punish hubris, this could easily serve as a defining example of that God’s works. I don’t just mean that we never found WMD, but Iraq could hardly be seen today as the example to the rest of the Middle East of the benefits of democracy that was once one of the stated aims of the war. Iraq wasn’t previously involved in terrorism, but now it is the Middle East’s most effective training ground for radical Islamic terror fighters. It would be hard to make up a more comprehensive failure of both vision and policy. I guess it is quite an achievement when people like Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have gotten it so wrong and are still able in their own minds to say they have gotten everything completely right – well, at least it defies satire.

This isn’t just my own personal hindsight bias talking. Many people, (and the deepest and saddest irony being that many of these people were in the US military) warned against this absurd adventure only to be ignored and worse by their civilian leaders.

This is a remarkable book, and one that provides a very disturbing insight into the asylum that, for a frighteningly long time, had been taken over by the lunatics. If humans were able to learn from history, then this fiasco would be one of the lessons I would put on the curriculum.

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the definitive book on the Iraq War to date. It provides ample evidence that the G.W. Bush regime, along with the Pentagon and the CIA, made a false casus belli for war with Iraq, keenly anticipating an easy victory with Iraqis greeting American soldiers with garlands of flowers as liberators. That, alas, was not to be.

Furthermore, what was galling was that the U.S. had absolutely NO comprehesive plan or set of plans for rebuilding the Iraqi economy and re-establishing basic services for the Iraqi people. (By basic services, I mean water, electricity, sanitation services, and civil institutions such as the courts, and fire and police services.) Nor were enough troops provided, not only for waging the war, but also for securing the borders, and laying the foundations for a timely return to normality in Iraq. What was also appalling was that the U.S. government principally used the services of organizations sent to restore basic services in Iraq, which were made up of people who had ABSOLUTELY NO TRAINING OR EXPERIENCE for the reconstruction projects they headed! Indeed, many of these people (several of them were recent college graduates) were chosen because of their political fealty to Bush-Cheney.

To quote the author, "[i]t now seems more likely history's judgment will be that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 was based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history. It was a campaign plan for a few battles, not a plan to prevail and secure victory. Its incompleteness helped create the conditions for the difficult occupation that followed. The invasion is of interest now mainly for its role in creating those problems."

I strongly urge any discerning reader with an interest in U.S. foreign policy to read this book with care, comparing it with David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest."

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout my reading of Thomas E. Ricks, "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq," the song, "How Do You Sleep," by the late John Lennon kept playing in my head.

And Why Do You Ask? Because despite the warnings from military experts, historians, UN Inspectors, and former military officials against going to war with Iraq, our high level government officials disregarded such warnings and our Congress refused to dig deeper into the issues for fear of appearing weak.

Yes, there was plenty of evidence that Saddam Hussein had 'NO' weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks and that going into Iraq could be quite costly, deadly, and never ending yet we went anyway.

The hawks, President George W. Bush (spend the Vietnam war protecting the coastline of the United States) Vice President Dick Cheney (I had more important issues than Vietnam) Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (spend his time in the military as a flight instructor) and Under Sec. of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (was too busy in the world of academia to spend any time in the jungles of Vietnam) assured us it would be a piece of cake and we would be welcomed as liberators.

Yes, these four armchair generals knew how easy it would be to just invade Iraq (on the cheap nevertheless, with insufficient manpower, and no plan after toppling Saddam, and a disregard for the culture of the land and the many different religious sects).

So I ask, once again, how do you Motherfuckers sleep at night knowing that everything you told the American Public was a lie, that the cost of the invasion at last count would be close to a half trillion dollars or more, and the cost in human lives (American soldiers, reporters, and innocent Iraqi civilians) would total in the tens of thousands and still rising and after nearly 20 years we are still there.

Mr. Ricks' novel is a rich, comprehensive, illuminating, instructive, and sad story about the war in Iraq. It, once again, shows us how little we learned from the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Balkan wars, and how politics and winning elections are more important to our leaders than the lives of our soldiers.

[megs_bookrack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary history on our time in Iraq from the lead up to the invasion until 2005. The author must have had incredible access to top military brass and people within the administration; very richly detailed. Exhaustive in its breadth and research this book is a stunning narrative that left me shaking my head. This should be required reading for all Americans.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retrospective on another important book published some years ago on Iraq. How has the work held up?

Thomas Ricks' book, Fiasco, was part of an increasing body of literature, featuring more and more books based on the words and experiences of insiders, government and military officials talking after the fact, raising questions about the wisdom of the original decision to invade Iraq and the occupation and "nation-building" efforts thereafter.

This work (and others as well) raises important questions about the extent to which the American effort to create democratic nation building in Iraq was doomed from the start. Any number of books and articles in the subject of what it takes to create democracy and what it takes to engineer democracies speak to a project that had a low chance of success from the "get go." And, given the strategic and tactical errors of the United States, those originally low odds of success became lower still.

So, Fiasco is one among several works that raised serious questions about the outcome of the American experiment in democratic nation building in Iraq. Ricks' book is useful in this context; to this point, it is one of the best efforts at getting insights and accounts from insiders. Again, we need to be somewhat cautious about the many sources who spoke with the author. Some have axes to grind; others are not necessarily the most credible sources. Nonetheless, this work, in combination with others that have appeared, raises interesting and important questions and is an important work to explore.

Iraq, as of early 2011, appears to be wobbly, but it has become a more independent state and the mechanisms of government created over the past several years creak along. We probably need a bit more time to see how things end up, but many of the negative analyses, such as Ricks', may well have been too negative. Again, though, we need to see how history works itself out.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always enjoyed Thomas Ricks' reporting in WaPo, WSJ, etc. as well as his earlier book Making the Corps. What I appreciated most about Fiasco was its crisp prose and simple level-headedness. In that, Fiasco confirmed a belief that I have slowly been coming to, that even after we invaded Iraq, it still really might have been ok (not good, necessarily, but ok). But we blew opportunity after opportunity to do the right thing, and it really is unredeemable now. The thing that weirds me out the most, though?
Realizing how much of this basic narrative was available to me while I was neck-deep in grad school. Granted, I was a military history freak in jr high and high school and still read the news avidly even during seminary. But if I could spot so many of our military and policy missteps as an overworked theology student, what the hell was our White House and DOD doing? Wasn't it their job to pay attention? How bad was their information stream anyway? Or were they really that arrogantly impervious to uncomfortable truths?
Depressing, but enlightening.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touted by John McCain and others as the definitive Iraq War book, Fiasco gives a detailed blow by blow account of the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq. Writing as objectively as possible, Ricks nevertheless gives a scathing account of the mismanagement of the war by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and the fiasco's chief architects.
The book is fascinating on many levels showing where people went wrong not only tactically but also ideologically. Interestingly, the only person who comes out looking good is Petreus who Bush recently put in charge. (Too little, too late?)
What most surprised me about the book is that it gives the impression that with better management and a plan, the invasion might have actually worked out on some level - a proposition I had been reluctant to believe.
The book concludes with four scenarios of what will happen when we leave: the bad, the worse, the worst, an a chilling fourth "nightmare" scenario. If you're reluctant to buy this, just read this last part while standing in the aisle at Borders.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had initially "read" the audio book of Ricks' follow-up to this book, The Gamble, and was impressed enough to get the (print version) of Fiasco. It did not disappoint as a book, even if it highlighted the problems with the current Iraq War.

Ricks is a very fair judge. He speaks well of many of the fine commanders on the ground, men like Gen. David Petreaus, who are doing the best with what they have. He faults, primarily, the dual response from Washington, both civilian and some military, to see a worst case scenario as a reason to go into Iraq in the first place while counting on a best case scenario for an exit stradegy. This leads to poor planning for the reconstruction phase and not enough people asking "What if?" Likewise, Ricks is quick to point out when certain individuals do realize how bad things are and make adjustments for the better, though institutionalized problems still exist (for example, if a battalion or division is making real progress towards quieting things down, it seems inevitable that the entire division would be rotated out for a less-experienced-with-the-locals replacement division who wouldn't have the trust of the locals). Ricks finds fault with the civilian government, news media, Congress, and some top commanders, but he ultimately explains things in a clear and thorough manner.

[Craig Fiebig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critically important but very difficult book to read. As one who long supported Iraq II to read such a thorough evisceration of the justification and strategic prosecution of the war was, frankly, heart-rending. There were errors of negligence, bull-headed-ness, stress at every level. There are two hopeful elements, first I learned of this book because it is being taught as part of the curriculum at West Point. This demonstrates an atypical and invaluable institutional capacity for self-learning. Second, although slowly, the U.S. military itself kept searching for tactical adjustments at the field level to the institutional failings of DC. Great innovation rarely occurs at the center, a strength of the West in general and the U.S. military in specific.

[Simon Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE U.S. MILITARY IN IRAQ

Thomas E. Ricks "Fiasco" is an account of the preperation for and invasion of Iraq and the ensuing occupation. The book gripped this reader from beginning to end it being the sort of book that causes bus stops to be missed. I was one of the many who was against the war as it came onto the agenda in 2002. I was not surprised the U.S. and the small number of other forces were not welcomed with boquets, what was astonishing was that within six months the United States had provoked an insurgency that would run on for as many years, indeed it is still active all be it at a lower level. The purpose of Thomas Ricks book is to tell the story of that grotesque failure of Neo-Con/Neo-Liberal foreign policy.

The first part of Ricks book captures the military planning and the bureaucratic manouverings in the period that led up to the invasion. There are noticeable limitations in his account especially in relation to non United States actors, for example Hans Blix and the global public campaigning against the war amongst other subjects are absent; Tony Blair and UN weapons inspections barely make at dent in the narrative. Rumsfield, understandably, is put under the microscope, not a pretty sight at all- arogance personified. A variety of American military figures (curiously every second one is described as being "unusually for the army an intellectual") from across the military spectrum. One thing becomes quickly obvious: phase 4, or after war planning, is in near total disarray.

The Invasion itself up to the taking of Baghdad is covered relatively briefly, the ensuing occupation in somewhat more detail. The inter service rivalry between the different parts of the military and even different units is a constant theme and rather more examples of its tribal nature pepper the text than those of the Iraqis whose society is constantly reffered to as tribal in nature by the author and many of the Americans who are quoted in the text. The main focus at this point is pretty much on the predicament that the United States military found itself in and its inability to more than sporadically remedy glaring defects. This makes gripping and fascinating reading but the Iraqis themselves and the resistance to the occupation are mentioned in pretty general terms. There are no attempts to quantify, even in an appropriately qualified manner, the amount of casualties inflicted on civilians. There are exceptions to this, Ricks covers the torture and abuse of detainees in Abu Ghraib in some detail. Paul Bremer and his neo-liberal experiment known as the Coalition Provisional Authority comes in for some criticism but I felt the author never covered the mindset or the implications of his regime in anything like the detail it deserved. There is also an impression that Bremer was something of a loose cannon, the President and the Government back in the U.S. had given him more or less total autonomy and were apparently not aware of what exactly he was getting up to. This seems rather unlikely. As for his succesor, John Negroponte? Other than a few brief sentances stating that he was more effective than Paul Bremer we learn nothing of him other than that he was involved in a "successful" counter insurgency in Central America. Not a single hint of the cost in death and destruction for the people of Central America during his time leading that counter insurgency.

The book covers the period up to the end of 2005. In his concluding chapter the author, while not shying away from describing the real situation on the ground as it appeared to the Military, does give indications that the United States Military has began to learn the lessons of conducting a counter insurgency and is beginning to make tangible progress. Certainly he is not guaranteeing iminent success but it does appear things are getting better. The reality is sobering to recall, a very high level of violence was to continue for another three years and even now deaths due to violence in Iraq run at several hundred a month.

The book is pretty good account of the American Military in Iraq and is more or less framed by their experiences and concerns. The military make up most of the voices that feature in the book and though there are a wide range of opinions, some of which are admiringly frank, it should be kept in mind that this still limits the picture placed before the reader. The Iraqis position, the divisions between different groupings of Iraqis, how the United States dealt with the different groupings and even that of other countries forces are not covered with anything like the desirable amount of detail to give a full picture of the occupation and its very real costs. The larger geopolitical forces that played out at the United Nations are given scant regard, the position of Israel with regards to the invasion is not mentioned at all. So bearing in mind the limitations it was still a fascinating book to read though the focus is too narrow to be a substantial general history of the war and occupation. That book still awaits to be written, probably along with the final chapter of the conflict itself.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, clear-sighted, and well-named review of the numerous and heretofore less well known derelictions which contributed so much to the conflict in Iraq. As readers of the "Washington Post" (like me)know well, Mr. Ricks writes with considerable authority about the military. One of the best of many recent books on this subject.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree -- great book...

[Daniel Villines · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who believe that mankind can learn from its mistakes and for those who want to know what those mistakes were leading up to the subject event.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Ricks pulls no punches in his account of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Ricks begins with the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, one which was unsatisfying to men like Paul Wolfowitz. Throughout the 1990s, this group of neoconservatives kept up a steady drumbeat against Iraq, while the election of George W. Bush in 2000 gave some of them – most notably Wolfowitz and his former deputy “Scooter” Libby – positions of power within government. Yet Ricks argues that they were on the losing end of the debate to intervene in Iraq until al-Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001. The attacks created an opening to reshape foreign policy, one that Ricks sees the neoconservatives as taking full advantage of the opportunity presented to push the administration towards a more aggressive posture internationally, one in which an attack on Iraq would be at the forefront.

With the decision to go to war essentially made by early 2002, the next question was how to win it. Here Ricks places responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, which not only believed their unrealistically rosy predictions about what a war would look like, but also insisted that U.S. military planners adopt war plans which fit these expectations, even if the consequences flew in the face of experience and accepted military doctrine. Here Ricks sees a lot of buck-passing, as everyone stifled their doubts and worked with what they had. Making matters worse was the plan for war itself. Anticipating the type of large-scale armor clash that the Army had been planning for since the Cold War, it imposed a strategy that would prove damaging in retrospect.

None of this seemed to matter in March and April of 2003, as U.S. armored columns roared into Baghdad as if winning some sort of great race. In the aftermath of the capture of the Iraqi capital, the administration celebrated it as the triumphant climax of the war. Yet Ricks views it as only the first battle. Throughout this point, he details the missed opportunities, faulting the blunders of the Pentagon planners, the commanders in the field, and the new head of the occupation authority, Paul Bremmer, for crippling the chance for a peaceful occupation. By the summer of 2003 Iraq had reached a tipping-point, after which an insurgency increasingly challenged U.S. control of the country. Ricks finds the cause for this at many levels, from the willful blindness of the political leadership to the neglect of the Army of the lessons of Vietnam, all of which had a ripple effect in the thousands of encounters between U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians. By the spring of 2004 the situation had deteriorated into a level of warfare that the U.S. military had not faced in generations, and while a new set of commanders have attempted to adjust in response, Ricks is pessimistic about the prospects of achieving the type of hopeful outcome so confidently promised in the run-up to the war.

Ricks’ book is a powerful and damming indictment of the conduct of the invasion of occupation of Iraq. Relying on thousands of documents and interviews with participants at all levels, he reveals in full detail the decisions and actions that have brought America and Iraq to the current situation there. Few groups come out of it with their reputations intact – the military, the civilian leadership, the media, and the Iraqis all receive a share of the responsibility for the mess described in the title. While a fuller picture would have been enriched Ricks’s analysis further still – he covers the roles of both the international coalition and the private contractors in passing only – his is nonetheless the best account available of the ongoing crisis in Iraq, one that is required reading for anyone seeking to understand how the American intervention in Iraq turned so disastrous.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The United States government is not necessarily known for its honesty or intelligence, but the utter incompetence and narcissism displayed by our leaders during the Iraq war is just quintessential idiocy. What was done (and not done) by power-wielding officials during this time is nothing less than systematic neglect and criminality.

Long story short, in the early 2000′s, a handful of very arrogant men in the top ranks of government deliberately manipulated our country into a preemptive war that has cost us (and the world as a whole) billions upon billions of dollars and untold human lives. Information was distorted, exaggerated, and twisted until the truth was unrecognizable. Sold to the country as necessary self-defense in the face of “imminent and irrefutable” threat, the Iraq war and subsequent “liberation” of the country has destroyed our international credibility, fanned the flames of unrest in the middle east, and created a never ending quagmire of chaos for our national security.

And where was Congress, you ask? Oh, that’s right. WATCHING! Questions were asked and concerns were raised, sure, but ultimately, no answers were demanded. The Bush Administration was given the green light (or at least not explicitly told to stop) despite the fact that officials used false/incomplete information to initiate war, did not outline long-term strategic plans, and could not provide anything but the most rudimentary (and outlandishly erroneous) estimates related to cost and time frame anticipated.

But it gets worse! Not only were the intelligence and rationale for invasion flawed and fabricated, the execution of the war and post-invasion occupation of Iraq were astonishingly mismanaged. Somehow, the same small group of hawkish, impulsive people that dragged us into war ended up with full, unchecked control over their train wreck. And, somewhat predictably, they made EVERY WRONG DECISION POSSIBLE. Literally. I don’t think they missed one opportunity to do the exact opposite of what they should have.

Underestimating the necessity of longer-term occupation and stabilization following the initial push into the country, and deliberately ignoring the numerous experts and officials advising caution, these idiots sent our country to war with too few troops, zero strategy, no cultural understanding, and ridiculously unclear lines of communication. The ensuing events, of course, were bloody and catastrophic.

It is baffling that there has been so little outrage and so few consequences for the people who created this waking nightmare. In the 12 years since the invasion of Iraq, the criminal behaviors of Bush Administration officials (I’m looking at you, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz!) have been seemingly swept under the rug. Half-hearted investigations have led to little more than slaps on the wrist despite overwhelming evidence of criminality. These men set the stage for years of international unrest, disturbing realms of torture, and unyielding, unnecessary death. Not to mention the set up for future conflict and the almost complete destruction of the United States international reputation.

Astoundingly well written and researched, this book will infuriate you.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this book after reading Black Hawk Down. In Black Hawk Down, Bowden provides a detailed account of fighting inside a city. I was interested to see how principles from Somali might have been applied in Iraq. This book, covering a much longer period (2003-2006) does not get into any individual battle details or, really, tactical decisions. For the most part, this book focuses on:
1) strategy (or lack thereof) at high levels of command
2) lack of army preparedness for a Phase 4 (occupation of Iraq)
3) Implications of the invasion on the future of the Middle East

As far as I know, the book does an excellent job of addressing these 4 points. I think the author tried to be balanced. For example, in his critique of General Odierno's use of heavy force, he acknowledges that the force may have been necessary even if it was counterproductive in terms of fueling the insurgency.

With respect to occupation, he doesn't paint a pretty picture. US soldiers are scared and seeking vengeance. Iraqi citizens are opposed to being occupied.

For his third point, his is eerily accurate in his predictions (circa 2006) that the Iraqi invasion could result in a regional conflict or a training ground for terrorists. I don't know enough if his prediction of a potential strongman leader came true, but as he described the conditions (lawlessness) that could lead to it and than the characteristics of the leader, I thought instantly of Rodrigo Duterte.

[Ian Divertie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to understand our current 2015 situation this is a MUST read. Mr. Ricks is a seer of uncommon vision even in 2015. Mr. Ricks' book "Fiasco" which oddly although written in 2006 and 2007 directly addresses our current problems in the Middle East. This book explains both how we got into this mess and accurately predicts today. In fact both its 2006 Afterword: Betting Against History and its 2007 Postscript are extremely prescient. The 2006 Afterword does indeed precisely describe the current mess. I can think of no book which I could recommend more HIGHLY than this one to explain our 2015 dilemmas.

I will tell you I read this book shortly after it was written in 2007. I will admit it still surprises me no one went to prison over what is contained in this book. My former employers also make a brief appearance in the opening chapters.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visiting Walter and Karen for a week and having finished my in-flight book, I asked them for recommendations and was handed this, most of which I read on the front and side porches of their rambling centuries-old home in Springfield, Vermont.

Ricks does not, as I would, decry the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but he does represent scathing criticisms posited by military officers against how the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been conducted under Bush and company.

[Mitchell Ehrlich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not quite what I expected. Recently I decided I should learn more about the wars the US has been apart of. So I plan on looking into the Civil War, closer into WWI and WWII (though i feel I have a good understanding of both especially the Second World War). And I especially want to understand the wars in the Middle East. When searching for a book on the US’s involvement in Iraq I was expecting more of a timeline and birds eye view of the combat. We definitely get that in this book. But this book looks heavily on the political side of the war, but I liked it and for a few reasons. This “war” started because the US believed that Iraq had nuclear weapons and intended to use them. (Spoiler alert, they didn’t) so basically the US was there on false information. But it didn’t mean they couldn’t get things done. One it the biggest things the US accomplished was killing Saddam Hussein. Who was the president of Iraq and a really bad guy and treated people in the worst ways possible. Another political aspect of the “war” was recent terrorist attack of 9/11 so President Bush used 9/11 and the supposed fact that Iraq had dangerous weapons to attack. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve put the word ‘war’ it quotation marks a few times that’s because the iraq war was never actually a war neither was Vietnam or the Cold War. Basically because congress has to declare the US to be at war. For example congress hasn’t declared the us to be at war since 1942(WWII). So really there are wars but in technicality not really. While this book never takes any close looks at individual conflicts it does mention the wide spread state of the military. As the war went on moral dropped significantly partly due to the fact that the military never felt they were winning but also that everything they did seemed to create more problems. With every major attack more people grew to hate the US military. Also the US was severely suffering from lack of numbers even though George W. Bush promised the US they would get more numbers if requested, another lie told by the government and president at the time. The government and news stations often told the US citizens that things were going well and that troops were feeling good, which simply was almost never the case and would be proved in surveys conducted later on. Troops and commanders were not prepared for the situations they had to deal with. This is a new kind of war. Instead of trenches and lines you’re dealing with buildings, civilian trucks. Roadside bombs, car bombs, civilians carrying rpg’s and ak’s. It was often the case that commanders didn’t know what to do and what the plan was after their next move this was often the case and summarized most of the war, unprepared, uninformed, no clear goal and no idea what to do after if we won. A huge problem with the war is that the US had no plan on what to do after the war. They had no plans on how to stabilize and rebuild. There were efforts made to make a plan but they all fell through like water. The war was nearly at its end when plans were put on one man and he was given until morning the next day. So to say the Iraq war was a mess is an understatement. The entire war was a mess until the Marine Corps got involved (my question is is why does it always take the marines to have to come in and fix a broken situation why can’t we have a plan and get it done, I’m glad we have a corps that can get the job done but why can’t it be done right the first time). The Marines are basically good at everything, they’re often known for being very good in combat but in Iraq they displayed they are very good with people it’s quite interesting what they did but it will take a long time to talk about. This has turned more into a summary of the war less than a review on the book so I’ll finish up. Once the war ended there was still a lot of conflict troops were still dying. So while the US was trying to clean up and gets things moving again they were still met with violence. Once clean up finished up the US left troops in Iraq to keep things under control. And there are still US troops in Iraq and most likely will be till Iraq goes into civil war.

Rick’s did an excellent job of describing the messiness, brutality, and the absolute fiasco that was the war in Iraq.

[Eric Zadravec · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first saw the subtitle of Fiasco, I thought 'adventure' was a euphemism - too light a word for the disastrous American invasion. But after reading the book, I realized that 'adventure' fit perfectly, in the same way drunk driving could be an adventure. Rash, ill-planned, fueled by a heady mix of overconfidence and blind optimism, and with no consideration to the consequences of their actions, so did the criminally incompetent Bush administration rush headlong into invading and occupying Iraq, at terrible cost to Iraqi and American lives.

Part I of Fiasco deals with why the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq. The story begins in 1991, after the conclusion of the Gulf War, where only a select few war-hawks called for the invasion and overthrow of Hussein's regime. 9/11, then, was the flashpoint that changed the American stance towards Iraq and the Middle East, ultimately propelling the administration to rush into an invasion of Iraq. WMDs were the supposed rationale for the invasion, and as Ricks points out, the logic here was pernicious: "we didn't expect 9/11 so we're now ignoring the risk of Iraqi WMD, even if the evidence isn't appearing." Essentially, it was an argument built on a lack of evidence, of which, concerning Iraqi WMDs, there was plenty. Bolstered by war hawks and American public jingoism, the Bush administration rushed into invading Iraq with no concrete strategy other than overthrowing Hussein, wishfully thinking democracy would emerge in the country thereafter.

Part II deals with the disastrous consequences of the lack of American strategy. Civilian mismanagement (in one notable act of incompetence, the civilian leader of the occupation authority dissolved the Iraqi military and made public employment of former Baathist part members illegal, quickly alienating hundreds of thousands of young men with military training) and military inflexibility quickly alienated the Iraqi population and led to the growth of an organic insurgency, largely bottom-up, with no clear political mandate beyond opposing American occupation. While there were some success stories - like the 101st in the North practicing proper counterinsurgency methods - the American military response was heavy-handed and blunt, only furthering the growth of insurgency. By 2005, the country was in full revolt and coming apart at the seams.

Part III deals with the aftereffects of the American invasion. Written in 2006, it was an ongoing section, discussing possible outcomes in Iraq and the changed face of American occupation. Regardless, as Rick notes, the whole invasion rested on erroneous assumptions to begin with, ultimately poisoning any future American effort at reconstruction in the region, no matter how effective. Today, that notion seems to have held true, with Iraq still plagued by instability, again facing widespread insurgency from ISIL in 2014 to 2017.

Rick's book is excellent written and richly detailed. His writing offers a great portrait of the American decision-making, the personalities of top American officials involved, and the interactions between civilian and military authorities during the war. Today, there is a popular notion that the invasion was a ploy by Bush to secure oil revenue and American hegemony; this assessment is unfair, as it paints Bush as far more intelligent and strategically minded than he actually was. The portrait of Bush that Ricks paints is of a president changed by the September 11th attacks, dedicating himself thereafter to countering terrorism, yet ultimately propelling it further through the heavy-handed and rash use of the American military.

For historiography this book could have used an introduction to Saddam's Iraq and the American involvement in the Middle East in the 1980s, instead of jumping straight into 1991 and leaving valuable background information out. Otherwise, it is an outstanding history of the 2003 Invasion, and I would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a greater understanding of the conflict in Iraq and the Middle East.

[Μιχάλης Παπαχατζάκης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το βιβλίο αυτό μιλάει για την εκστρατεία στο Ιράκ μέχρι το 2006. Το έγραψε ένας ρεπόρτερ- δημοσιογράφος της "Ουάσινγκτον Ποστ", ο Τόμας Ρικς και είναι ογκωδέστατο: 850 σελίδες. Συγκεντρώνοντας από εκθέσεις και άρθρα μέχρι προφορικές συνεντεύξεις ακόμα και στρατιωτών που πολέμησαν εκεί μας δίνει μια θαυμάσια εικόνα όχι για το τι έγινε εκεί (μιας και λείπουν οι διεργασίες της ιρακινής πλευράς), αλλά για το πως βλέπει τον πόλεμο (και τον συγκεκριμένο πόλεμο) το αμερικάνικο πολιτικοστρατιωτικό σύμπλεγμα. Όμως περιέχει και άφθονες εικόνες από την πολεμική καθημερινότητα των στρατιωτών κι αξιωματικών του στρατού κατοχής.
Αυτή η καθαρά ε π α γ γ ε λ μ α τ ι κ ή οπτική εκπλήσσει. Θα περίμενε κανείς και πολιτικές αναλύσεις, όμως το βιβλίο πλημμυρίζει από τεχνικές, λογιστικές θεωρήσεις κι αξιολογήσεις- ακριβώς ο τρόπος που σκέφτονται εκεί: πόσος στρατός χρειάζεται; Ποιες είναι οι φάσεις του πολέμου; Ποια πρέπει να είναι η αντιμετώπιση των αμάχων, των αιχμαλώτων, των ανταρτών, των ιρακινών συνεργατών; Πως γίνονται οι περιπολίες; Πως γίνονται οι έφοδοι στα σπίτια; Ποιους θεωρούν συμμάχους; Τί όπλα να χρησιμοποιήσουν; Κι όλα αυτά συνοδευόμενα από διαρκείς επαναξιολογήσεις και χρήση δημοσκοπήσεων σε μια προσπάθεια να καταλάβουν που πηγαίνουν τα πράγματα.
Οι πόλεμοι όμως δεν είναι στρατιωτικοί. Είναι πολιτικοστρατιωτικοί. Υπάρχει το μη μετρήσιμο. Το να τα βάλουν με έναν οργανωμένο (έστω και με σοβαρά προβλήματα) στρατό, όπως του Σαντάμ Χουσεΐν, ήταν πανεύκολο: σε ενάμιση μήνα κυρίευσαν όλο το Ιράκ. Θρίαμβος του επαγγελματικού υπολογισμού. Το να τα βάλουν με έναν ανοργάνωτο στρατό, όπως τις ακόμα και διάσπαρτες και αυτόνομες ομάδες ανταρτών ήταν σχεδόν αδύνατο: Πανωλεθρία του επαγγελματικού υπολογισμού. Ένα φιάσκο

[Emmet Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best account of the first half(ish) of the Iraq war I’ve read. Deep on detail, and deftly covers the political decisions and military aspects of the early years of the war.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweeping review of how the US government entangled itself in an illegal war for ‚freedom‘ and evoked an avoidable insurgency by disregarding every bit of wisdom in nation building.

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Within a few days, another sad milestone had been passed: More U.S. troops had died in combat since May 1, when President Bush had declared major combat operations finished, than during the spring invasion. In an odd echo of his “Bring ’em on” comment in July, Bush—who was meeting with Bremer in the Oval Office—interpreted the insurgency’s escalation as a sign of progress. “The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react,” Bush said, Bremer at his side. “The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can’t stand the thought of a free society.” (This prompted an officer to send off a reporter heading to Iraq with the warning, “Be careful, or you might become another sign of progress.”)

as a first draft of military history, this book is superb, and i appreciate how much it centers the experience of internal dissenters. however, ricks is a bit too willing to give the political and military establishment the benefit of the doubt; he occasionally veers into a kind of “if only X were different, this could’ve been successful!” tone, when in fact the entire enterprise (and, indeed, the war on terror itself) would’ve been a fiasco regardless of how well-run and well-thought out it was.

[Terin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiasco by Thomas Ricks is an incredible piece of journalism and history. It tells the sad, still unfinished saga of the build up to, and selling of, the Iraq invasion and war to the American people still recovering from the worst terrorist attacks ever on U.S. soil--9/11.

As Fiasco makes perfectly clear, were it not for 9/11, odds are the U.S. would never have invaded Iraq, let alone taken its eye off its revenge invasion of Afghanistan. And as the book also makes perfectly clear, while the U.S. military did what it was asked with the equipment and reduced force it was asked to use, in neither case was there adequate, if any, realistic planning for what to do after taking the country. I've argued before that Phase IV of both Iraq and Afghanistan are far more similar to the Philippine Insurgency than either Vietnam or World War II.

It doesn't take a military genius to realize that, as Collin Powell was alleged to have cautioned President Bush, the "Pottery Barn Rule" is the most apt: you broke it, now it's yours.

The British knew if you took a country and removed its government, you had to replace it with some means of restoring or instilling order, or it devolves into chaos. The effects of both invasions--with inadequate troop strength, slow adaptability to the enemy's tactics, and a lack of clear objectives and cultural awareness if not sensitivity--are still being felt, in our war dead, and our surviving veterans, and in the Middle East.

Ricks' book makes it clear that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong idea at the wrong time, which is precisely why it had to be sold, with fantasy verging on lies.

I recommend this book be read by all interested in recent history, and wondering how and why we got here, and how the hell we get out.

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to an abridged version of this on CD.Ricks describes the history of the war in Iraq from the viewpoint of the American military. It is clear the war was botched up from the very beginning by the higher-ups. He skewers many of the major players, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Tenet, Powell, Cheney, Bush and Bremer. Special condemnation goes to General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq for the crucial mid-'2003 to mid-'2004 period. Sanchez's imagination-free leadership led to the rise of the insurgency and the deaths of countless american troops and Iraqi civilians. His especially tone-deaf handling of the Abu Grahib scandal was really damaging to US credibility. No real higher up suffered in the slightest for Abu Grahib, which was continuously portrayed as the work of a few rogue low-level grunts. Actually it was directly attributable to attitudes and policies reaching to the highest levels of government.One quote in the book says it all. Some mid-level army officer said something like this: If you have a good strategy, but use the wrong tactics, you can and will eventually change your tactics to be effective. If you have the wrong strategy, it does not matter how good your tactics are, you will never be successful. The US basically went into Iraq with the not only the wrong strategy, but with no strategy at all. We got ourselves into a counter-insurgency war. The military knows how to fight this kind war, but all the lessons learned in Vietnam were completely forgotten.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I looked forward to reading this book for a while.  I really enjoyed another of the author's books, The Generals, and its critical take on U.S. military leadership.  Fiasco did not disappoint.  

Fiasco is the story of the early part of the Iraq War.  There is a little background so that one understands the main players, namely Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, and then it jumps headfirst into a chronological discussion of the decisions made and their repercussions.  Fiasco discusses how the war was basically preordained.  The decision to go to war was made before the evidence was evaluated, if it ever was.  It destroyed some careers, like Colin Powell, and effectively started others, like David Patraeus.  

Most important, and disappointing in my opinion, were how many opportunities to adjust or correct the path were squandered.  While disappointed, I also find it incredibly infuriating that this book was written in 2006.  I have been to Iraq twice, 2009 and 2012-13, and the lessons that could be learned from this book were available and KNOWN in 2006.  During my first deployment, my unit worked closely with Iraqi authorities to help them improve.  My unit started some of these partnerships, a process that was probably needed more than five years earlier.  So many people had no idea how to run this war and as a result, I am a two-time participant.  

I think that anyone who votes should read this book.  It should make you sick that leaders in our country cared so little about those they sent to a war that was so poorly conceived.  

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazingly devastating analysis of the war in Iraq. The best way to describe this book is that it is this generation's The Best and the Brightest, written by David Halberstam almost four decades ago about the U.S.'s blundering into the Vietnam war. Like Halberstam, Ricks shows a passion for his subject material combined with a clarity and persuasiveness in his analysis. Anyone who reads this book and comes away unconvinced of its central argument obviously didn't read the book well enough. However, Ricks doesn't have the same literary style that Halberstam does. Most of the times, the narrative is very stark and blunt. It's almost like reading the middle section of the declaration of independence, which lists the abuses of King George against the colonists, but is too boring to remember. The other thing that Ricks could have done, like Halberstam, is taken time to give a short biography on the key players. He rarely does that and when he does it's a one to two page summary, like the stats on the back of a baseball card. I short, though, this an amazing book that should be read by all Americans today and will be used by any self-respecting historian in the future.