Ebook Free Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks
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Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks
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A military chronicle of the Iraq war is a critical assessment of America's role as viewed from the firsthand perspectives of senior military officers that argues that the guerrilla insurgency that took place in the months after the fall of Saddam Hussein was avoidable and that officers who spoke against the war did so at the cost of their careers. 200,000 first printing.
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Product details
Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (July 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781594201035
ISBN-13: 978-1594201035
ASIN: 159420103X
Product Dimensions:
6.5 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
441 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#340,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
As a soldier medic deployed in Iraq with the military police, I was astounded at how accurate, revealing, and viceral the author gets. Fiasco, provides insight into the "why" behind horrible policy choices that negatively impacted soldiers, stability, and Iraqis. A must for Soldiers struggling to answer, "how the whole invasion went to hell"
Thomas Ricks has done a great job with this book. Not only is his account detailed and well written, it makes you go back in time and relive the moments that led to the war that followed. Im going to write this review based on points I found important during my reading;- Ricks starts the account from the Gulf War; he gives us an insight of the measures that were taken at the end of it and how there measures influenced the policy towards Iraq in the years that followed.- We get to know the guys that had been pro-war since after 91 (like Wolfowitz, Perle ecc) and why they thought the war would be "good".- Gen.Anthony Zinni is a key figure during the first chapters of the book and his missions (Desert Fox and the containment policy) are given a detailed account. Also during the whole war in Iraq he is given a judgemental say on how the war is going and how it can get better.- The "mistakes" made in the pre-war period and the source of the "bad intelligence" are also treated in detail. You get to learn where the chain got broken ecc.- The way the war starts and its the first months and the inside of those days at the Bush administration take the greatest part of the book. Practically until page 300 (out of 450) you find yourself still in midsummer 2003. Then with the deterioration of the ground situation the reporting changes too. Because the journalists couldn't get out of the safe zones, the reporting details of those months diminish too.- Ricks has this fashion of portraying all the US citizens who take part in the war effort (be it the soldiers, their commanders, the generals or the Bush adm. officials) as good men inside and quite skilled. They are all very hard working, believe in what they say (officially at least) and have PhDs form the Ivy League, but they all find themselves missing the main point of the day. Everyone seems to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.- A detailed account is also given on the abuse cases; who did what and how it was "punished". You get to read how the US soldiers viewed the iraqi civilians and why they got so hated.- "The insurgents" as they are referred during all the book never get a proper name. I mean everybody knew back then that al-Qaeda and the sunni tribes were the main players for the sunni side and that Jaish al-Mahdi (who had infiltrated the police and the army; point which is not touched in the book) was for the shias but they are referred as one during the whole reading. Also nothing is mentioned about the leaders of the insurgency, except for Muqtada Sadr.- A point that I personally found very interesting is when Ricks lays out the possible outcomes of the war in Iraq as "best outcome", "middle" "bad" and "nightmare". At the "nightmare" section he draws a possible scenario in which Iraq is used as a base to form a Caliphate. And he also says that he fears the coming of a "young, energetic, moral, modest, austere..." leader, like Saladin he even adds, and that the muslims will rally after him to fight the westerners. Considering the events that have occurred these last months in Iraq and the region, it seems like the nightmare is coming to life.- Ricks end the book with the coming of Gen.Petraeus as the general commander of the Iraqi mission. Clearly he loves him, because there is a section filled only with the praising of him and the intellectuals that surrounded him. It gives you a taste of what his second book (The gamble) would be like.To sum up, the book is a must read for those who want to have a general view of the beginning and development of the first years of the infamous war in Iraq. The book is well researched and according to my opinion, quite truthful.
Thomas Ricks has written the essential military history of the early years of America's Iraq misadventure. Like so many of the insta-histories of the period, the book is in many ways very journalistic. Unsurprising, perhaps, since Ricks is a journalist. But unlike other journalists' books on the same subject, Ricks also knows how to write serviceable, accessible operational-level military history. Thanks to Ricks' contemporary reporting during the war and his extensive use of sources on the ground, the book has an immediacy and freshness that has not waned with time.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 will I suspect always be controversial, and the subject of endless debate. I supported the war without qualification, and even now, believe it was necessary. Saddam Hussein had after all, violated U.N. Resolutions 18 times. An acquaintance, holding the opposite view and detesting George W. Bush, suggested around 2007 that I read Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks. With the recent rise of the terrorist group ISIS, the withdrawal of our troops, and the country perhaps headed for civil war, I decided finally to read it, to determine, as best I could from a book authored by someone to the left of my own views, how we started there and why we had so much trouble at the outset.Because of the title itself, I expected Ricks' book to be a bit of a diatribe. I was in the main,wrong. Although he clearly believes, based upon General Anthony Zinni's assessment, that Saddam Hussein was contained, and the invasion unnecessary, Ricks, formerly a Pentagon correspondent at the Washington Post and a thoughtful liberal now working on defense issues at a think tank, is careful to give detail to his story. And except for an unpardonable cheap shot at Bush 43 in which he compares him to the old Yuppie Jerry Rubin, he is fair, even if he disagrees with others. He gives everyone their say if he interviewed them. For example, there is plenty of criticism of the rough tactics of the 4th Infantry Division, led by General Ray Ordierno. But he interviewed Ordierno and allowed the now Army Chief of Staff to air his views. Importantly, too, Ricks has great respect for the military, even a certain reverence, which is why it must have distressed him to point out so many flaws in its strategy and tactics.While only covering 2003 through 2005, the book's theme is clear. Civilian and military leadership failed for a number of reasons, personal arrogance, lack of strategic planning, poor tactics and a misunderstanding of the type of war the military was fighting. Not only was the National Intelligence Report on the question of WMD dubious as to the existence of such weapons, there was no understanding of how Operation Desert Fox, a four day bombing campaign in 1998, crippled Iraq's ability to make chemical weapons. There is a small, although I think important sentence about the NIE. Neither the President nor Condoleeza Rice read the full 92 page report. That the President relied on a 5 page summary is not surprising. Some people absorb more through auditory learning, as did FDR. And presidents have a plethora of people with whom to consult on issues of national security. But the National Security Adviser relying on the same 5 page report? I find that astonishing.General Shinseki's belief that 300,000 troops would be needed to invade and occupy Iraq was dismissed by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz on the theory that all the troops had to do was depose the dictator, conquer Baghdad, and the rest of Iraqi society would welcome us with open arms. Speed would trump the concept of overwhelming force, commonly known as the Powell Doctrine. But Colin Powell was running the State Department, and felt he had to tread lightly over the field of military strategy.According to Ricks, the suits at the Department of Defense were making their own war plans, never mind that is what the military is trained to do.The military itself thought it a conventional war similar to World War II, the same mistake made in Vietnam. The top brass never understood this war was different. There were exceptions like Generals Patraeus and Batiste and Colonel McMaster, now a major general, and the only one of the three remaining in the military. But they, highly educated and holding doctorates were exceptions. Most in command never understood the concept of winning the hearts and minds of the people. And of course, there were the terrible abuses at Abu Ghraib, another example of poor planning, which left the prison overcrowded, the staff overwhelmed.So many failed, Rumsfeld, through his arrogance, which caused many in the military to dislike him, his Deputy Secretary,Wolfowitz, the quiet chief theorist who thought it necessary to create a democracy in Iraq, and Douglas Feith, who ran the policy shop. Tommy Franks was detached and uncaring, like many others, about an occupation strategy to pacify the country. He and Feith were particularly obtuse after the initial invasion.Perhaps the greatest mistake, personnel-wise was making Paul Bremer the head of the Conditional Provisional Authority. Much like the key Defense Department honchos, he refused to listen to others, not so much a diplomat, but an autocrat. Bremer decided to tear up the Iraqi military, police force and entire government structure, figuring he could rebuild them from scratch, never mind the population needed foundations to rally around. Of such mistakes are insurgents made. Unbelievably, during the occupation, there was no unity of command, a first principle of war. Bremer had certain powers, as did General Rick Sanchez, autocratic himself but a good man in over his head. And according to Ricks, they detested each other and stopped talking to one another.There are some weaknesses here. Ricks believes that the war was a product of neoconservative philosophy, the foreign policy school that government, based on moral principles, should do large things. It is not that simple an answer. People can view issues from different perspectives and reach the same conclusion. Nor is it clear just when the effects of Desert Fox were understood by the military or the civilian leadership, before or after the invasion. Ricks relies on statements by the civilian leaders, he does not interview Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other key government players, for some of which he has obvious contempt They were perhaps too busy to grant him audiences, but it is not clear what the Commander-in-Chief was being told. He omits entirely the statement made to Bush by CIA Director George Tenant that it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had WMD, a glaring omission. Also, at an event at which retired General Zinni attended, Dick Cheney made the absolute assertion that Saddam had WMD. Ricks lays blame at Cheney's feet for making the war a certainty. But we really do not know the basis of Cheney's declaration. But his history was one of a man immersed in detail. So the question arises as to what the intelligence agencies were showing him, too. Vice Presidents after all, do not go out in the field and acquire intelligence themselves. True, Zinni says he almost fell off his chair at the statement, for he had kept his clearance to view highly classified information, and there was no such indication, but there is no showing he saw or was told the exact things Cheney might have seen or was told.Much of the time, Ricks relies on Washington Post stories written by others. The book drifts a bit aimlessly after Bremer and Sanchez are replaced by better men, John Negroponte and General George Casey, who worked well together, although Casey himself was later replaced by Patraeus. Perhaps Ricks had a deadline to meet and could not shape the final chapters as he might have. Fiasco, focusing on a limited time period, does not cover the Surge, which was in fact the essence of strategic counterinsurgency, and brought a temporary victory, and what could reasonably be called a calm to Iraq. But given its scope, and the difficulty of obtaining information, Ricks has done an outstanding job.But I wish Amazon would find an alternative phrase for a 5 star rating other than "I loved it." It seems inappropriate to classify books about real war and real death in the same way one might enjoy Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
As a retired career Naval Officer, I found this book very informative. As the grandfather of an Army airborne ranger qualified First Lieutenant I found the lack of professionalism and integrity on the part of both senior and junior army officers to be very disturbing. I consistently am recommending this book to all of my acquaintances. The author appears to be calling a spade a spade and does not seem to have a vendetta against anyone. Should be on the mandatory read list for every career and retired officer of all services.
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