Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fiasco is a more strongly worded title than you might expect a seasoned military reporter such as Thomas E. Ricks to use, accustomed as he is to the even-handed style of daily newspaper journalism. But Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and the author of the acclaimed account of Marine Corps boot camp, Making the Corps (released in a 10th anniversary edition to accompany the paperback release of Fiasco), has written a thorough and devastating history of the war in Iraq from the planning stages through the continued insurgency in early 2006, and he does not shy away from naming those he finds responsible. His tragic story is divided in two. The first part--the runup to the war and the invasion in 2003--is familiar from books like Cobra II and Plan of Attack, although Ricks uses his many military sources to portray an officer class that was far more skeptical of the war beforehand than generally reported. But the heart of his book is the second half, beginning in August 2003, when, as he writes, the war really began, with the bombing of the Jordanian embassy and the emergence of the insurgency. His strongest critique is that the U.S. military failed to anticipate--and then failed to recognize--the insurgency, and tried to fight it with conventional methods that only fanned its flames. What makes his portrait particularly damning are the dozens of military sources--most of them on record--who join in his critique, and the thousands of pages of internal documents he uses to make his case for a war poorly planned and bravely but blindly fought.

The paperback edition of Fiasco includes a new postscript in which Ricks looks back on the year since the book's release, a year in which the intensity and frequency of attacks on American soldiers only increased and in which Ricks's challenging account became accepted as conventional wisdom, with many of the dissident officers in his story given the reins of leadership, although Ricks still finds the prospects for the conflict grim. --Tom Nissley

A Fiasco, a Year Later

With the paperback release of Thomas Ricks's Fiasco, a year after the book became a #1 New York Times bestseller and an influential force in transforming the public perception (and the perception within the military and the civilian government as well) of the war in Iraq, we asked Ricks in the questions below to look back on the book and the year of conflict that have followed. On our page for the hardcover edition of Fiasco you can see our earlier Q&A with Ricks, and you can also see two lists he prepared for Amazon customers: his choices for the 10 books for understanding Iraq that aren't about Iraq, a collection of studies of counterinsurgency warfare that became surprisingly popular last year as soldiers and civilians tried to understand the nature of the new conflict, and, as a glimpse into his writing process, a playlist of the music he listened to while writing and researching the book.

Amazon.com: When we spoke with you a year ago, you said that you thought you were done going back to Baghdad. But that dateline is still showing up in your reports. How have things changed in the city over the past year?

Thomas E. Ricks: Yes, I had promised my wife that I wouldn’t go back. Iraq was taking a toll on both of us--I think my trips of four to six weeks were harder on her than on me.

But I found I couldn't stay away. The Iraq war is the most important event of our time, I think, and will remain a major news story for years to come. And I felt like everything I had done for the last 15 years--from deployments I'd covered to books and military manuals I’d read (and written)--had prepared me to cover this event better than most reporters. So I made a deal with my wife that I would go back to Iraq but would no longer do the riskiest things, such as go on combat patrols or on convoys. I used to have a rule that I would only take the risks necessary to "get the story." Now I don't take even those risks if I can see them, even if that means missing part of a story. Also, I try to keep my trips much shorter.

How is Baghdad different? It is still a chaotic mess. But it doesn't feel quite as Hobbesian as it did in early 2006. That said, it also feels a bit like a pause--with the so-called "surge," Uncle Sam has put all his chips on the table, and the other players are waiting a bit to see how that plays out.

Amazon.com: One of the remarkable things over the past year for a reader of Fiasco has been how much of what your book recommends has, apparently, been taken to heart by the military and civilian leadership. As you write in your new postscript to the paperback edition, the war has been "turned over to the dissidents." General David Petraeus, who was one of the first to put classic counterinsurgency tactics to use in Iraq, is now the top American commander there, and he has surrounded himself with others with similar views. What was that transformation like on the inside?

Ricks: I was really struck when I was out in Baghdad two months ago at how different the American military felt. I used to hate going into the Green Zone because of all the unreal happy talk I'd hear. It was a relief to leave the place, even if being outside it (and contrary to popular myth, most reporters do live outside it) was more dangerous.

There is a new realism in the U.S. military. In May, I was getting a briefing from one official in the Green Zone and I thought, "Wow, not only does this briefing strike me as accurate, it also is better said than I could do." That feeling was a real change from the old days.

The other thing that struck me was the number of copies I saw of Fiasco as I knocked around Iraq. When I started writing it, the title was controversial. Now generals say things to me like, "Got it, understand it, agree with it." I am told that the Army War College is making the book required reading this fall.

Amazon.com: And what are its prospects at this late date?

Ricks: The question remains, Is it too little too late? It took the U.S. military four years to get the strategy right in Iraq--that is, to understand that their goal should be to protect the people. By that time, the American people and the Iraqi people both had lost of lot of patience. (And by that time, the Iraq war had lasted longer than American participation in World War II.) Also, it isn't clear that we have enough troops to really implement this new strategy of protecting the people. In some parts of Baghdad where U.S. troops now have outposts, the streets are quieter. Yet we're seeing more violence on the outskirts of Baghdad. And the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk make me nervous. I am keeping an eye on them this summer and fall.

The thing to watch in Iraq is whether we see more tribes making common cause with the U.S. and the Iraqi government. How long will it last? And what does it mean in the long term for Iraq? Is it the beginning of a major change, or just a prelude to a big civil war?

Amazon.com: You've been a student of the culture of the military for years. How has the war affected the state of the American military: the redeployments, the state of Guard and Reserves troops and the regular Army and Marines, and the relationship to civilian leadership?

Ricks: I think there is general agreement that there is a huge strain on the military. Essentially, one percent of the nation--soldiers and their families--is carrying the burden. We are now sending soldiers back for their third year-long tours. We've never tried to fight a lengthy ground war overseas with an all-volunteer force. Nor have we ever tried to occupy an Arab country.

What the long-term effect is on the military will depend in part on how the war ends for us, and for Iraq. But I think it isn't going to be good. Today I was talking to a retired officer and asked him what he was hearing from his friends in Iraq about troop morale. "It's broken," he said. Meanwhile, he said, soldiers he knows who are back home from Iraq "wonder why they were there." Not everyone is as morose as this officer, but the trend isn't good.

Amazon.com: You quote Gen. Anthony Zinni in your postscript as saying the U.S. is "drifting toward containment" in Iraq. What does containment of what will likely remain a very hot conflict look like? You've written in your postscript and elsewhere that you think we are only in act III of a Shakespearean tragedy. I wouldn't describe Shakespeare's fifth acts as particularly well contained.

Ricks: I agree with you. Containment would mean some sort of stepping back from the war, probably beginning by halving the American military presence. You'd probably still have U.S. troops inside Iraq, but disengaged from daily fighting. Their goals would be negative ones: prevent genocide, prevent al Qaeda from being able to operate in Iraq, and prevent the war from spreading to outside Iraq. (This was laid out well in a recent study by James Miller and Shawn Brimley, readable at http://www.cnas.org/en/cms/?368.)

Containment probably would be a messy and demoralizing mission. No one signs up in the U.S. military to stand by as innocents are slaughtered in nearby cities. Yet that might be the case if we did indeed move to this stance and a full-blown civil war (or a couple) ensued. And there surely would be refugees from such fighting. Either they would go to neighboring countries, and perhaps destabilize them, or we would set up "refugee catchment" areas, as another study, by the Brookings Institute, proposed. The open-ended task of guarding those new refugee camps likely would fall to U.S. troops.

The more you look at Iraq, the more worrisome it gets. As I noted in the new postscript in the paperback edition, many strategic experts I talk to believe that the consequences of the Iraq war are going to be worse for the United States than was the fallout from the Vietnam War.

Amazon.com: A year and a half is a long time, but let's say that we have a Democratic president in January 2009: President Clinton, or Gore, or Obama. What prospect would a change in administration have for a new strategic opening? Or would the new president likely wind up like Nixon in Vietnam, owning a war he or she didn't begin?

Ricks: Not such a long time. President Bush has made his major decisions on Iraq. Troop levels are going to have to come down next year, because we don't have replacements on the shelf. So the three big questions for the U.S. government are going to be: How many troops will be withdrawn, what will be the mission of those who remain, and how long will they stay? Those questions are going to be answered by the next president, not this one.

My gut feeling is the latter: I think we are going to have troops in Iraq through 2009, and probably for a few years beyond that. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if U.S. troops were there in 15 years. But as I say in Fiasco, that's kind of a best-case scenario.

From Publishers Weekly

The main points of this hard-hitting indictment of the Iraq war have been made before, but seldom with such compelling specificity. In dovetailing critiques of the civilian and military leadership, Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Ricks (Making the Corps) contends that, under Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith, the Pentagon concocted "the worst war plan in American history," with insufficient troops and no thought for the invasion's aftermath. Thus, an under-manned, unprepared U.S. military stood by as chaos and insurgency took root, then responded with heavy-handed tactics that brutalized and alienated Iraqis. Based on extensive interviews with American soldiers and officers as well as first-hand reportage, Ricks's detailed, unsparing account of the occupation paints a woeful panorama of reckless firepower, mass arrests, humiliating home invasions, hostage-taking and abuse of detainees. It holds individual commanders to account, from top generals Tommy Franks and Ricardo Sanchez on down. The author's conviction that a proper hearts-and-minds counter-insurgency strategy might have salvaged the debacle is perhaps naive, and pays too little heed to the intractable ethnic conflicts underlying what is by now a full-blown civil war. Still, Ricks's solid reporting, deep knowledge of the American military and willingness to name names make this perhaps the most complete, incisive analysis yet of the Iraq quagmire. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); 1st edition (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143038915
• ISBN-13: 978-0143038917
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (327 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #42,260 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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548 of 600 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Perfect But Easily the Best Book on Iraq Produced So Far, July 26, 2006

By	amicus veritas - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Hardcover)

I've spent the better part of the past 36 hours inhaling Thomas Ricks' "Fiasco" and I have to say it is easily the best book so far produced on the Iraq War. I say this as someone who supported the original rationale for going into Iraq and who still supports the war effort. But support should never be blind and I think there's much that opponents and supporters of the war can gain from reading Mr. Ricks' "near-term history" of the conflict. He has produced a remarkable book that synthesizes a broad range of information and yet does so in an immensely readable fashion. The author is to be genuinely congratulated. For me, the book was particularly insightful in offering a cogent narrative of how the insurgency came to be. It presented a detailed inventory of the political and military mistakes of the period stretching from immediately after Baghdad's fall in the late spring of 2003, through the rise of the insurgency later that year and into the middle of 2004.

Is the book perfect? No and doubtless as more time passes and as more information becomes available some of the conclusions and narratives presented here may change. But for the time being, the book is the best contemporary record of the events of the past three years in Iraq and I can't imagine it being surpassed anytime soon. I found it far more useful than the somewhat tepid "Cobra II" and the better-but-not-as-good "Assassin's Gate."

What most impressed me was the way Ricks dealt honestly with the shortcoming of the US military and particularly the US Army. I have the deepest respect and admiration for those who serve, but there has been a tendency to only blame the mistakes in Iraq on the civilian political leadership (who certainly deserve their share of the blame) and to forego honest criticism of the tactics and actions of the troops in the field. Ricks does an excellent job of calling into question the wisdom and preparedness of "Big Army" to fight the type of conflict this country has been engaged in in Iraq for the past three years.

As with any substantive work on an issue as politically-charged as Iraq, there will be discussion of the question of bias and motive on the part of the author. Ricks frankly writes with barely veiled contempt for the president and the secretary of defense, though Paul Bremer, General Ricardo Sanchez, and former Chairman of the Joint Staff Dick Myers come off as even bigger villains (if that's possible.) In many cases, I don't think the blame -- particularly as it relates to Bremer -- is misplaced. More to the point, Ricks' assessment of the mistakes made on the ground in Iraq are sufficiently worthwhile and thought-provoking that his "bashing" of certain officials can be tolerated. To be clear, it's not so much that I mind him assigning blame, it's more that he seems to view the handling of the Iraq war -- ironically enough -- in black-and-white terms with respect to senior political and military figures. In short, Ricks has heroes and then he has those who can do nothing right and, to my mind, this is most apparent in his treatment of Rumsfeld.

To cite just one example, early in the book he questions Rumsfeld's decision to bring in Pete Schoomaker, a retired general to replace outgoing Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki; Ricks notes that Schoomaker, in addition to being retired, is a Special Forces general who is removed from mainstream "Big Army" culture. Ricks seems to imply his appointment is a mistake. Yet by the end of the book, Ricks is trumpeting the fact that the Army in Iraq really needs to fight more like Special Operators and less like a conventional force. Wouldn't it therefore seem like a good idea to have Schoomaker at the top pushing for that type of change?

Similarly, there seems to be a basic conflict at times between whether Ricks thinks more troops are needed or not. He mentions (usually in passing) instances where commanders wanted more forces in specific instances, though he never does provide solid evidence of why their requests were denied or by whom, one of the major disappointments I have with the book. However, even as he suggests that more forces would help he also strongly highlights the damage done by large US presence deployments. This seems to be a disconnect -- and one that Ricks is not alone in making -- in criticism of the US strategy in Iraq. Is the problem that we have too many guys stomping around inadvertently making enemies or is that we don't have enough troops over there?

I bring these points up not only because they seem logically inconsistent but because Ricks "do-no-right" attitude towards the administration seems forced at times, almost like he needs to pile on to placate the many readers who doubtlessly will pick up this book hoping to have more ammo to slam Republicans in Internet chat rooms. Did Rumsfeld really do *nothing* right in the past six and a half years? (Don't feel the need to answer that.) My point here is that an attempt to appear even slightly balanced in presenting the viewpoints of the administration would have been nice, as would a different title, which seems primarily designed to capitalize on the polarization surrounding the war. Mr. Ricks has crafted a thoughtful book that deserved a more inviting title, not least because by the end of it, you're left wondering if we really have turned the corner in Iraq and are on the verge of a breakthrough or if it is really "too little, too late" as one Army reservist observes.

Two other quibbles:

I don't personally know Walt Slocombe, but I always thought he seemed a remarkably intelligent man and, moreover, seemed to be of good character. (Slocombe held the job of under secretary of defense for policy under Clinton, the job that the much maligned Doug Feith held under Dubya's first term.) I was always struck by the fact that Slocombe -- who apparently was moved by patriotism to work with the CPA -- defended Rumsfeld's version of the dismantlement of the Iraqi army, i.e., that it dismantled itself through desertions and that trying to maintain it as the force that was in place when Saddam fell would entail essentially a forced re-conscription of thousands of Iraqis who viewed the military as an instrument of oppression. Better to start from scratch, which we did, but which many critics claim freed up a large number of young Iraqi males with military training to fuel the insurgency. Slocombe's view on the subject -- presumably somewhat informed and coming from the perspective of a Democrat and former senior Clinton official -- is dismissed with one line to the effect of "others saw it differently." Pages and pages then go on about the terrible impacts on Iraq of the decision to disband the army. I have long wanted to see Slocombe's position on this explored beyond his own op-ed on the subject and I was surprised that Ricks gave such little emphasis to his view (or at least didn't explore it further.)

Finally, Ricks, like many others, repeats the notion that "containment was working" on Saddam. Not unlike the arguments proffered to justify the war by the administration, the statement that "containment was working" is only a half-truth. It may have held in check the threat Saddam posed to the region and it also now appears to have sufficiently degraded his ability to pursue WMD. But Ricks overlooks the impact of the containment policy on the broader US position in the Middle East and the detrimental impact that sanctions had on the Iraqi people. Clearly, the presence of US forces on Saudi territory (as part of containment) were a major source of ire for Osama bin Laden and in fact were the primary justification in his declaration of jihad against the United States in 1996. There also was the moral question of whether it was "worth it" in humanitarian terms to keep sanctions in place, as Madame Albright was asked once. Amidst the chaos and death of the Iraq War, it's easy to forget that sanctions, according to the World Health Organization and UNESCO, were driving Iraqi infant mortality rates sky high. Ricks glosses over this perspective in less than half a page extrapolating Paul Wolfowitz's pre-war views, but then later repeats the mantra that "containment was working" as he indicts US failures in Iraq towards the end of the book. We should be clear-eyed about the human costs of the current war, but we also should acknowledge the human costs of the course we were on if we hadn't invaded.

Those criticisms aside, I still cannot recommend this book strongly enough to anyone interested in what's happened in Iraq in the past three and a half years and where we may be headed. It is readable, insightful, and informative. You (as I) may not agree with everything the book has to say, but this book has more to say about Iraq than any work yet produced. Read it for yourself and reach your own conclusions.

67 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sobering account of a colossal failure in leadership, July 25, 2006

By	Jack Murray - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Hardcover)

I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy of this book passed along by a friend. It truly is a page-turner, and I spent most of last night reading it. Ricks has well documented with intricate and compelling detail the complete failure of leadership which resulted in the Iraq fiasco. While many of the facts he's reporting have been detailed before, Ricks's analysis of the many failures in Iraq is far more focused than any other analyses I've read to date.

I found it particularly compelling how Ricks thoroughly documents the dichotomy of the Bush Administration's schizophrenic thinking on Iraq: the rationale for going to war was based on a worst-case scenario, but all the actual war planning itself was based on a best-case scenario. Hence, the colossal management failure which resulted. The report by the Coalition Provisional Authority that Ricks cites says it all about the Iraq occupation: "pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck."

In closing, I would caution readers here to consider the reviewers who actually seemed to have read the book, as opposed to those with an ideological ax to grind who toss off one-sentence reviews on the day the book is released. Ask someone who has actually read this book for their opinion.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 'Fiasco' - And It's Only Gotten Worse, September 17, 2006

By	Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life" (Monona, WI) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Hardcover)

Thomas Ricks has been the senior Pentagon reporter for the Wall Street Journal and later the Washington Post. He is no enemy of the US military (in fact, he does not advocate US withdrawal). This book really should be read by every American not just for what it tells us about the Bush Administration and the Iraq war, but as a cautionary tale about the limits of military power.

Let me be clear: I opposed this war before President Bush chose to start it mainly because it was a distraction from fighting terrorism. `Fiasco' details the choices made by the Administration, the willful ignorance of facts that didn't fit their chosen path.

Fiasco is strongest in describing the false premises upon which the Administration built its case for war, the lack of planning for Phase IV (post-war plans), and Bremer's enormous false steps. And Ricks' admiration for the US military shines through as he relates its failures, successes, and `lessons learned'. There is indeed much to be admired in the US military - such as the Army's Center for Army Lessons Learned where the whole point is to review what the Army did, what it did right, what it did wrong, and how to apply those lessons in the future. Sounds like something the White House should try.

Fiasco is such an important book that I would like to give it a `5' star rating and it really should be read, but the book lacks structure, other than simple chronology and after a while begins to read like a string of newspaper articles. The concluding Afterword was especially weak with brief descriptions of what might lie ahead. Ricks is best at description, okay at prescription, and poor at prediction. Fortunately, most of the book is descriptive and very little is predictive.

Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the story of the Iraq War.