Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

[RamboLiberal]

"Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" was based on a review of more than 30,000 pages of military documents, several hundred interviews with U.S. military personnel, the author's own articles in The Washington Post, and reporting in The Post and other newspapers.

From its first days in Iraq in April 2003, the Army's 4th Infantry Division made an impression on soldiers from other units -- the wrong one.

"We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly," recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. "They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians. . . . What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong."

Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.

The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for "grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers unable to figure out who was of value and who was not," according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division's detainee operations by the Army inspector general's office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300495.html

The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.

That bombing came almost exactly four months after the U.S. military thought it had prevailed in Iraq, and it launched the insurgency, the bloody and protracted struggle with guerrilla fighters that has tied down the United States to this day.

There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein's government knew it couldn't win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation. The stockpiling of weapons, distribution of arms caches, the revolutionary roots of the Baathist Party, and the movement of money and people to Syria either before or during the war all indicate some planning for an insurgency.

But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072200444.html

[stray cat]

1. It looks interesting - any real reviews of it yet?

[RamboLiberal]

2. Only thing I found so far was on Amazon.com

Book Description
The definitive military chronicle of the Iraq war and a searing judgment on the strategic blindness with which America has conducted it, drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondant Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco is masterful and explosive reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq, based on the unprecedented candor of key participants.

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.

There are a number of heroes in Fiasco-inspiring leaders from the highest levels of the Army and Marine hierarchies to the men and women whose skill and bravery led to battlefield success in towns from Fallujah to Tall Afar-but again and again, strategic incoherence rendered tactical success meaningless. There was never any question that the U.S. military would topple Saddam Hussein, but as Fiasco shows there was also never any real thought about what would come next. This blindness has ensured the Iraq war a place in history as nothing less than a fiasco. Fair, vivid, and devastating, Fiasco is a book whose tragic verdict feels definitive.

[jannyk]

3. I bought this today after...

seeing the author (Ricks) on Charlie Rose a few nights ago. I bought it at B&N then went to the cafe, got a latte and, 3 hours later I'm still there reading.

The book is fabulous - pulls no punches, names 'names' and points fingers - oh does it ever.

Buy it, borrow it or steal it, but definately read it!

[Hamlette]

4. Agree, its a great read

I'm not sure I agree with his conclusions about what to do, but he definately pulls no punches showing what a mess Bush made out of Iraq.

And it presents another question I can't answer. For years I've been trying to figure out why Bush went to war in Iraq in the first place. Assassin's Gate came as close to answering it as anything I've read but of course the author doesn't really know the answer for Bush he just gives the reasons others inside the admin and outside had for going.

My new question is: if the war was so important, why did they play it to lose? Every person in the military said "you need more troops". Rummy said no. Every misstep after that was done against the advice of everyone in the know. It is almost like he wanted to lose. Now, a tin hatter might say, he wanted to lose (create a mess there) so he could widen the war to the rest of the ME and bring democracy to the whole region (translate: steal all the oil?). Could they be that calculating? Or are they ideologues who believed what they wanted to believe (it will be easy, they really love us, if we take out Iraq the whole region will fall apart like the former USSR did.) I don't get it.

I want to live another 100 years in the hopes by then we will have figured out what this was all about.

[Marie26]

5. What answer did

Assassin's Gate suggest? I'm curious & too lazy to actually read the book.

[Hamlette]

8. Assassin's Gate lists about 6 reasons, held by different groups/people

The Friedman reason: the middle east will fall like dominos if one goes democratic. WMD and nukes and the connection with 9/11 (all of them disproved) to get rid of a dictator.

The author likes the "save the Iraq people from the horror of Saddam" which is why, he says, he supported the war. The book is like a mea culpa from the author on how wrong he was.

Even though at the time I thought the book came closest to answering the question,I've changed my mind. Rich answers the question in The Greatest Story Ever Sold which I just reviewed here. The reason? To win the 2002 midterm elections. Although they didn't invade until after the election, they needed the war to scare us and paint the dems as weak.

[exlrrp]

6. A Great read!! have just finished it

Like someone said above, I also might argue with some of his conclusions but the book is a must read. Very detailed, especially the runup to the war and the influence of Chalabi and the INC. This is very important to understand.
I think Bush took us into war because he believes his own bullshit. He decided that the world would be better off without Saddam and that was it although even his dad told him not to. You can tell reading this book that they never thought it through, they went with Chalabi's happyface BS about us being received as liberators. One thing you get reading Fiasco is that we are being lead by some molto arogant sumbitches who do not question their own words or thoughts at all. Hope thats not news to you folks. I don't think there was a conspiracy--why blame on conspiracy that which is adequately explained by sequential stupidity which seems evident now.

[reichstag911]

7. Ex-"lurp," hm?

Where, Vietnam? Just curious...

I don't know about your position about Bush believing the world would be better without Saddam. That may be part of it, but I think at bottom, Bush's reasoning is far more internal, and Oedipal, than that. He's a hopelessly impotent human being (in all areas: athletic, intellectual, ethical, philosophical, spiritual,...), certainly in comparison to the paper accomplishments of his father, and I think Shrubbie saw this as his one chance in an empty life to "outdo" Poppy...and boy, has he ever, in the most fucked-up possible fashion!

PS As for Fiasco, I'm ~150 pages in, and I'm lovin' it. Ricks really goes after the neocons. I'm looking forward to seeing him on his book tour appearance in Chicago at the beginning of Oct.