Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005Finalist 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 through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the 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. |
Contents
3 | |
12 | |
The Aftermath of 911 | 35 |
The War of Words | 46 |
The Silence of the Lambs | 85 |
Winning a Battle | 115 |
How to Create an Insurgency | 151 |
How to Create an Insurgency 11 | 177 |
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 |
Cant Produce Anything | 203 |
Getting Tough | 214 |
The Descent into Abuse | 270 |
Notes | 441 |
Acknowledgments | 463 |
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Common terms and phrases
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