Review of Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. (Thomas E. Ricks, Penguin Press, New York, 2006)

The curious thing about a book, any book, is that it tends to raise a fundamental question: What is there in this piece of printed pulp that was, at one time, a living tree do I not already know? Then you read it and find out.

Ricks knows what he's talking about as he is the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent and got a lot of information contemporaneously, and from emails from personnel engaged in the operations. From this he has pieced together a “first draft” of history, and a good first draft it is. There are many, many anecdotes and real-life scenarios showing what life was like in the combat theater which I appreciated, being relegated to my soft chair: the stories I found particularly sorrowful were the ones describing fratricide, roadside bombs and deaths and mutilations of comrades. I don't know whether having lived through and observed (through the media) what was actually happening in and around Iraq contributed to my feeling of deja-vu as I read Fiasco.

The answer to the first question referenced in paragraph one above was, as it turned out, both a lot and not much. There is a lot I did not know about the how of what happened in Iraq, but I pretty much knew what happened as and when it happened. At least I thought I did, and after reading Fiasco I still think so. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I happened to read much of the reporting as it became available in the media, although I don't remember having seen his bylines. Maybe it just means that this book describes events straight down the middle, even if there might be some spin in the title.