Fiasco: the American military adventure in Iraq

Thomas Ricks

Penguin, 2006 - History - 482 pages

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in 'Fiasco', Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster. As many in the military publicly acknowledge here for the first time, the guerrilla insurgency that exploded several months after Saddam's fall was not foreordained. In fact, to a shocking degree, it was created by the folly of the war's architects. But the officers who did raise their voices against the miscalculations, shortsightedness, and general failure of the war effort were generally crushed, their careers often ended. A willful blindness gripped political and military leaders, and dissent was not tolerated.

What people are saying

Review: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

User Review  - Dennis - Goodreads

The title of the book discloses the author's intended purpose in writing it. His critique of the run up to the war in Iraq, the war itself and then his presentation of likely outcomes paints a very ...

Review: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

User Review  - Mike Hankins - Goodreads

If you can only read one book about the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Fiasco is probably the one you want. Journalist Thomas Ricks gives a detailed look at the lead up to the war in both the political and ...

Contents

• A Bad Ending: 3
• Containment and Its Discontents: 12
• The Aftermath of 911: 35
• The War of Words: 46
• The Runup: 58
• The Silence of the Lambs: 85
• PART 11: 87
• INTO IRAQ: 106
• Winning a Battle: 115
• How to Create an Insurgency I: 149
• Cant Produce Anything: 203
• Getting Tough: 214
• The Descent into Abuse: 270
• The Army of the Euphrates Takes Stock: 301
• The Marine Corps Files a Dissent: 311
• The Surprise: 321
• The Price Paid: 363
• The Corrections: 374
• Turnover: 390
• Too Little Too Late?: 413
• Betting Against History: 430
• Notes: 441
• Acknowledgments: 463

About the author

Thomas E. Ricks is The Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, where he has covered the U.S. military since 2000. Until the end of 1999, he held the same beat at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for national reporting, he has reported on U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is the author of Making the Corps and A Soldier's Duty.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Fiasco: the American military adventure in Iraq
• Author: Thomas Ricks
• Edition: illustrated, annotated
• Publisher: Penguin, 2006
• ISBN: 159420103X, 9781594201035
• Length: 482 pages
• Subjects: History / Military / United States; History / United States / 21st Century