Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

FIASCO - An Outsider's View

Thomas Ricks writes an excellent book taking a braod view and very neatly breaking down the salient issues of the Iraq War. The book takes a top-down approach. Those looking for low level perspective won't find it in this book although Ricks does include some insights from troops-in-the-ranks level. His view is decidedly liberal in that he advocates for leaving Iraq and painting the war as a mistake. Ricks assails the Bush Administration policy very well. However, this is only part of the story and does not delve into what the Army and Marine Corps senior commands in Iraq are doing to address the shortcomings of the Rumsfeld Department of Defense policies. This is a useful book to gather information. It's gretest flaw is that it's long on criticism and very short on offering better solutions. Any reader serious about studying the Iraq War needs to give this book a read. The book has great reasearch value.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Hitpiece

ALL wars are full of mistakes. The greater tragedy is men pay with their lives. The author in his insatiable Bush derangement syndrome lists mistakes upon mistakes with no explanation why they occured, the conditions/that contributed to them or how toavoid them in the future. In short, long on facts and short on analysis. Not recommended for the individual trying to understand history or avoid mistakes. Absolute must read for those interested in scoring political points and sounding intelligent while bashing another party or individual.

Should Be Read By Every American

We'd all benefit from learning from our mistakes. Think this is an important read and lesson in history. Should be read in history courses in high school and college. Author's careful research is packaged into a well-written piece that reads like a cross between a detective novel, a biography (Dick C), and good old fashioned investigative reporting.

The name says it all

If one is to be honest, especially those in the military and the department of defence, we have to admit that we made mistakes in the beginning. Thomas E. Ricks, is an individual who has said things that many of us privately thought but never spoke up. There were a series of mistakes and miscalculations, from training and preparedness, to the realistic expectations of what would once we invaded and won. I'm usuually skeptical about topics like this and was looking for some bias or slant to support those against the war; but to my surprise it really spoke to more of the unspoken truth and say the things that needed to be said. I look forward to reading the follow up "The Gamble" about the surge written by Thomas E. Ricks as well.

This book is good

The book is mostly for learning purposes unless, like me, you find personal interest.

FIASCO is anything but!

a 'must read' if you are going to understand the 'behind the scenes' working of the minds & people - what they thought, how they behaved and why we are where we are today.

An example: A very highly ranked women said: "I knew there were 500 ways to do it wrong. Who knew they would go do all 500 of them"
A fascinating, spellbinding, hugely researched account. Democrats and Republicans
absolutely should read this if they are going know anything besides 'the spin'..

Susan

An essential guide to the early invasion of Iraq. This book should be right behind Sun Tzo's "The Art of War" on every military Officer's bookshelf.

This is an excellent history of the early invasion of Iraq. It is not very speciffic and focuses on a long period of time instead of individual events. I think everyone in the military should read this book.

Excellent Book

As an Army veteran of the war in Iraq (2004-2005) I can say I was very impressed with this book, very accurate in it's description of the combat that took place and it is a scathing look at the incompetance and lack of planning by the Bush administration and the Pentagon, all Americans should read this book if they want a real version of what happened during the first part of the war, it will change a lot of minds and prove that Bush/Cheney/ Rumsfeld had no idea what they were getting into or even what they were doing.

Outdated Nonsense. Waste of time

its interesting that folks like Thomas Ricks can get book deals for subjects they so obviously know little about. Like a true Michael Moore piece of quasi-fiction this book handpicks individuals for information and in my estimate most likely ignores those who give him information that doesnt gel with his book's "vision". Any American who reads the newspaper knows this book is now dreadfully outdated and that Mr. Ricks hedged his bets with the wrong side. An unengaging slow read that did little to draw the reader in.

0 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

A Book That Very Likely Saved Lives

It's fascinating that one can walk into a B&N today and buy a 'counterinsurgency' manual, as if we too, can become instant armchair experts in what's really counterintuitive warfare - that for hearts and minds rather than merely blood. Though a non-military combat reporter, Ricks understands far better than anyone in Washington the subtle differences. Another who understood is General Petraeus, who for better or worse, was originally sent back from Iraq to Leavenworth to reacquaint Army leadership with counterinsurgency doctrine. Among other things, Ricks discusses how various ground units fared, and how Petraeus' tactics and local politics differed from the sheer brute-force employed by other commanders. This book hit the shelves at about the same time military personnel, through their own service newspapers, began expressing disgust with the politicians' campaign. While 'counterinsurgency' became the media's new buzzword, Rumsfeld was soon out at the Pentagon, and Petraeus in command Over There. Bush's 'surge' may be working, or at temporarily alleviating the situation, but it's not merely because of numbers. A leader who told the media years earlier, 'I like Iraqis, I really do,' is finally where he should be and those who could only do further harm to our troops now have careers elsewhere. Together with our service men and women speaking up, I believe Fiasco was one of the last straws that accomplished some necessary regime change at home. Though still horrific, the levels of violence and casualties in Iraq has ebbed, and though we won't know which, there will be Americans coming home, with their eyes and limbs, and Iraqis surviving to hopefully shape their country, thanks in part to Ricks' work.

Very good book

For those that follow the news and know a little military history, the general thrust of this book is nothing new. But the level of detail is very good and I enjoyed how the author seems to have done a very thorough job of research. It appears the US military is finally starting to realize the type of war we are fighting in Iraq (an insurgency coupled with a civil war), but it really may be too late to make a difference. Some mistakes you can't just make good. It is a very good book through, well written and very detailed. While obviously with a title like Fiasco is dwells a lot of the negative, but the author also writes about some of the things that have worked. The mess in Iraq was not a foregone conclusion.

FIASCO is the best word to describe America in Iraq

I was in Iraq as a contractor in 2004-2005. I went there believing we would rebuild Iraq and be a force for good in the world. It was a bitter disappoint to see the self inflicted mess in Iraq unfold. A part of me died there. But the book title, 'FIASCO - The American Military Adventure in Iraq', is not descriptive of what I saw there. The military was not the problem. The root cause of the FIASCO was the dishonesty, corruption and incompetence of President Bush combined with his crass cronyism. I thought the book would be more to the point if that reality was told with more force and outrage. Fiasco - the George W. Bush legacy, is the only way to describe Iraq.

A reviewer

A solid, thorough overview of the lead-up to the insurgency and the lack of strategy/unity of command that would have narrowed its scope. Detailed reporting, so you can tell that this was written by a journalist. On the down side, I found some sections a bit redundant and just about went crazy with the hundreds of different names! Overall strongly recommended.

A poor attempt at distracting from the facts.

Fiasco misses because it tries to compare the Iraq War to other recent conventional wars. A war such as this has never been fought before, it requires new rules and has different victory conditions. This is why this title will never be suitable for a true military history of the Iraq War. If you go by conventional terms, we defeated the Iraq army and occupied Baghdad in record time. What came after was seperate from the initial operations. The author simply does not understand this. Since other reviewers gave thier personal feelings on the issue, here is mine. This war has been prolonged on purpose. Anti-US terrorists are now halfway across the world fighting trained soldiers instead of blowing up women and children in the United States. I think that was our current administration's plan from the beginning and that is why it is a success. That is also why this book fails - it judges the war in a theater outside of its intended purpose. Holding true to its' political bias, it also tries to illustrate that this war belongs solely to Bush's regime, which is simply a lie. Many notable democrats and others not only supported the war but also voted for it to take place. It will take more facts and less of the same old Anti-Bush lies and propaganda from the media and liberal authors that is crowding the literary world for a book like this to be a success.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good but Incomplete

This is a nice presentation on the war in Iraq. However, the author should have discussed more about other factors that led to the war such as what are discussed in 'The New Iraqi Dinar Investment Guide' which gives great detail on the oil shortage and insurgency.

One of the best books yet on the war against Iraq

This is one of the best books on the war against Iraq. Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post¿s senior Pentagon correspondent, argues that the invasion has been the worst US foreign policy decision ever. With 655,000 Iraqis killed, more than 2,810 US troops dead and more than 21,600 seriously wounded, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster. The 9/11 Commission concluded unanimously that there was no evidence that Iraq and Al Qa¿ida ever had `a collaborative operational relationship¿ and no evidence that Iraq had ever been involved in any attack on the USA. The USA¿s leaders presented their wishful thinking as fact - about Iraq¿s non-existent Al Qa¿ida links and about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So the US¿s rulers should have had just one target ¿ those who carried out the attack. Instead, they attacked three - Al Qa¿ida, Afghanistan¿s Taliban, and Iraq. A study by Jeffrey Record, published by the War College¿s Strategic Studies Institute, said, ¿Of particular concern has been the conflation of al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein¿s Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored crucial differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the GWOT [Global War on Terrorism] but rather a detour from it.¿ Ricks also observes that the US¿s rulers understated the difficulty of remaking Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the war¿s architects, characteristically said in December 2002, ¿people are overly pessimistic about the aftermath.¿ He also said, ¿I don¿t see why it would take more troops to occupy the country than to take down the regime.¿ He claimed that the US force would need to be only 30,000 by August 2003, and that Iraq¿s oil would pay for occupying and rebuilding Iraq. In the real world, the USA now has more than 150,000 troops there and the war has cost the USA more than $300 billion. In a textbook example of how to create an insurgency, the US occupation authority destroyed Iraq¿s administrative structure, army, police and industries. Oil production is half pre-war levels. A member of the Coalition Provisional Authority described it as `pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck¿. A four-star general said that it was almost as if the USA was working `to create the maximum amount of chaos possible¿. The occupation forces¿ presence and actions feed the fires. The US and British states are using 60,000 mercenaries, who are unregulated and unaccountable. There are almost 21,000 British `private security guards¿ in Iraq, three times the number of British troops. The US state institutionalised abuse: its military intelligence ordered, ¿we want these individuals broken.¿ In the first 18 months of the occupation, 40,000 Iraqis suffered detention in US¿run prisons. There were 34,131 insurgent attacks in 2005, up from 26,496 in 2004. The war has exposed every part of the US ruling class¿s system as a failure ¿ the executive, the military establishment, the intelligence agencies, the media, Congress, NATO, `the special relationship¿. (Ricks mentions Blair only three times, each time as standing next to Bush.) The rulers¿ cheerleaders now lie that `we all got it wrong¿ no, the US and British ruling classes got it wrong the working classes of the world got it right, opposing the war from the start, by huge majorities.

A Surprising Midadventure Threatens to Ignite the World's Oil Fields for Decades

Surely, you remember all of those Weapons of Mass Destruction that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld, and The New York Times assured us were being hidden in Iraq. If you have a short memory about what we were told, Fiasco will remind you what came out of those horses' mouths in 2002 and 2003. If you think back even further, you may also recall an attack on the United States in New York and Washington D.C. that led to about 3,000 deaths caused by an outfit called al-Qaeda headed by a fellow named Osama bin Laden. We haven't found that fellow yet, and we've invaded at least two countries to locate him. He doesn't seem to be in Iraq, either. Fiasco points out that there never was an Iraqi connection to that group of terrorists, but in the aftermath of our invasion Iraq has become the headquarters and training ground for the most active and effective terrorists in the world. Maybe we'll eventually lure bin Laden there. So why read this book? Well, Mr. Ricks does a superb job of tracking down all of the planning, training and preparation for the post-invasion period that did not occur. As a result, it seems like the United States made virtually every major mistake possible in turning a liberation into a heavy-handed, insensitive occupation that turned the majority of the Iraqi people into opponents of the United States from being favorably disposed. As early as five months after Saddam Hussein was captured, 55% of Iraqis felt that it was more dangerous having American troops in Iraq than to have them all leave immediately. If you are like me, you'll be disgusted, appalled and ashamed at the travesty of how the United States mismanaged the reconstruction of Iraq. Who is at fault? Well, it's hard to find people who aren't at fault. Feel free to list the usual Republican and Pentagon leaders, but add those in Congress who backed off from providing civilian oversight. Can you imagine that serious counter-insurgency planning only began in August 2004? And we lost ground in 2005 on that front. So where are we now? Apparently, we're worse off than if we had stayed home in 2003. The book ends with several scenarios of what might happen next, all of which are even more unpleasant than the reality we have today. Tens of thousands more will die, including thousands of Americans. Power will shift into less friendly hands. More terrorists will be trained. Our supply of oil will be less secure. Gasoline will hit $9.00 a gallon in one scenario. The book also upholds the honor of the ordinary soldiers and Marines who have done tough duty, far beyond what could have been expected of them . . . without the proper training, support, leadership resources. My sense from this book is that a sequel will be written ten years from now called Quagmire. Why did I grade the book down? Despite doing a fine job of tracking down the untold parts of the story, I found that Mr. Ricks loves to editorialize a little too much before he proves his point. Here's an example in the first sentence of the book: 'President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy.' So what are the lessons for us as citizens? It looks like we should be sure that no one (of either political party) ever gets enough power to head off on such ego trips again. Gridlock looks pretty good as our primary option for getting the government back under control.

Its like the best book ever

Oh my Gosh. After reading the first few pages of this book I couldn't beleve that it was so emotional.. I cried like 10 times.

Excellent

This was a well written book, however I always stuggle with the question,'why?' I think the book 'The Game of Life: it's almost over' by Linda Dipman, should be read along with it to help understand this question.

Peace Lost to Expediency?

Thomas Ricks rightly states that the U.S. effort since 1991 should be characterized as a long war made up of four distinctive steps: 1) A short ground battle in 1991, 2) Twelve years of containment done largely from the air, 3) A second short ground battle in 2003, and 4) Another decade of containment ¿ this time on the ground, and inside Iraq (pp. 395-96, 433-39). To his credit, Ricks does not shy away from calling to task those who he deems responsible for a wide range of blunders made in the design and execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Unjustified optimism remains an enduring trait of the U.S. management of the Iraq war (pp. 246, 323, 360). Two of the first casualties of the Iraq war have been the irreparable damage to the credibility of some key players and a durable loss of both prestige and power of deterrence for the U.S. (pp. 90-96, 109, 128, 147, 167-72, 184-85, 212, 263, 268, 293-94, 304, 308-10, 325, 329, 341-48, 362, 385-86, 406-12, 430-33). Ricks uses mostly well-identified sources to back up his argumentation. Ricks reminds his audience that in the run-up to war, administration officials tended to assume the worst-case scenario for WMDs, disregarding contrary evidence that Saddam Hussein was largely contained in his cage. Contemporarily, the same administration officials made rosy assumptions about the welcome the U.S. military would get from grateful Iraqis, about the quick establishment of a new Iraqi government, and about the swift return of most U.S. troops to their home bases (pp. 58-59). Many ordinary Iraqis, especially in the South, did not forget how the U.S-led coalition ended the fighting prematurely and clumsily at their expense after expelling the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991 (pp. 5-6). Furthermore, Ricks does not spare either Congress or the Media for going AWOL during both the run-up to war and the ensuing occupation of Iraq (pp. 28, 35, 61¿ 65, 85-90, 380-88). The U.S. quickly squandered the blitzkrieg victory that it achieved in the spring of 2003. Ricks clearly enumerates the different factors that have contributed to that sad outcome: 1) Casual dismissing of the looting after the fall of Baghdad, which was made possible by insufficient manpower (pp. 135-36, 148, 150, 178, 182-83) 2) The quick turnover of staff with critical expertise to deal with the tribal structure of Iraqi society (pp. 157, 323) 3) The initial focus on mostly ghost WMDs, which allowed the first insurgents to plunder existing weapon dumps at will (pp. 146, 168, 191) 4) The lack of adequate troops and illegal guidelines to manage the overflow of detainees that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal, the most well-known among existing Iraqi scandals (pp. 147, 175, 197-200, 238-40, 258-61, 270-97, 378-80) 5) The excessive de-Baathification within Iraqi ministries, which fuelled the Sunni insurgency (pp. 158-61, 180) 6) The dissolution of the Iraqi army and national police force, for which the Sunni insurgency was also grateful (pp. 161-66, 180, 191) 7) An over-focus on foreign fighters, which have represented a small percentage of the insurgency (p. 194) 8) The postponement in the organization of elections and the formation of a sovereign Iraqi government with an eye on writing a constitution (pp. 165, 254-55, 413) 9) Hasty transition of Iraq to a free market economy, which alienated further the middle class, which was already on the receiving end of de-Baathification (pp. 165, 181) 10) The existence of largely unrestrained powerful militias such as the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army (pp. 244, 336-38, 353, 358, 395, 428) 11) The strategic confusion about the asymmetric warfare that the U.S. was compelled to wage (pp. 138-44, 152-54, 164, 179-85, 192-95, 203-13, 222-69, 301-02, 313-24, 371, 392-94, 405, 414-24) The initial heavy-handed approach of most of the U.S. military, the lack of unity of command, open borders, and the enduring isolation of most U.S. troops in their