"Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks .....

[H2O Man]

I started reading Ricks' book on "The American Military Adventure in Iraq" last night. The author is the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, and I've found him interesting to listen to when he is on the various talk shows. He has two other books of note -- "A Soldier's Duty" and "Making the Corps." I haven't read either, yet, though I suspect I will soon.

Here is a brief quote from early in the book: "How the U.S. government could launch a preemptive war based on false premises is the subject of the first, relatively short part of this book. Blame must lie foremost with President Bush himself, but his incompetence and arrogance are only part of the story." (page 4) He caught my attention with that!

The early part of the book focuses a lot on Paul Wolfowitz's role in promoting a furthering of the Gulf War of Bush the Elder. The information I've read thus far isn't really "new" .... in fact, those who participate on DU are going to find it familiar to the information reported and discussed on this forum. But it is encouraging to see that it is being presented to a different audience in this book.

I'm curious if other DUers have read "Fiasco" (or either of the other two books), and what you thought of them?

[Captain Hilts]

1. The WP actually did a lot of very good reporting leading up to the war, etcc.

They really did.

Ricks and Chandrasekaran - and Dana Priest did a lot of good work.

RC's book too.

[H2O Man]

3. In rural upstate NY

there is a decided lack of choice in newspapers. Thank goodness for the internet, as my exposure to the WP is primarily from "links" on DU. The selection of non-local papers here is generally restricted to three NYC papers. While I have read the NY Times for decades, and admired a number of reporters there, the Judith Miller episode still bothers me.

Ricks says of her 12-20-01 report on an Iraqi defector's first-hand knowledge of WMD programs: "No one knew it at the time, but with that story, Miller began one of the more dismal chapters in modern American journalism. She had lit the fuse of a running story about the Iraqi arsenal that eventually would blow up in her face, tarnishing not just her own career but also one of the proudest names in American journalism. The New York Times, the 'paper of record,' would carry more than its share of misinformed articles that helped drive the nation toward war in Iraq." (page 35)

From what I've seen on DU, the WP seems to have done better on Iraq than the NY Times. Do you think it also promoted the administration's purposeful lies in the same manner Miller & Co did?

[Vinca]

2. I ordered a copy from Amazon last week - hoping to get it today. nt

[H2O Man]

4. I'm finding it

hard to put down. I'll be interested in your take on it.

[greenman3610]

5. I recommend that book, not just because of the war coverage

but because it says so much about how
human endeavors come to grief because of
lack of clarity and purpose.

Not just the story of Iraq, but
a cautionary tale for all ages.

[H2O Man]

6. Right.

I think, from what I've read thus far, that he shows how human beings can be held hostage by preconceived notions that do not apply to the present, much less the future. When it happens to us on an individual level, we make errors that can result in damaging a relationship with a family member or friend. When it happens on the international level, the damage is far greater. And that is indeed a cautionary tale for the ages.

[motocicleta]

50. Having recently finished my master's degree in business,

I think Fiasco is also a wonderful description of how not to manage an endeavor. A perfect management case study.

As well as being relentlessly, pitilessly depressing.

[H2O Man]

51. The more of it

I read, the more impressive it becomes.

[NJCher]

7. I'm reading it now

Yes, interesting, but at the same time and as you say above, if one is a reader here, there's not much that's new. On the other hand, it is quite interesting to see how he puts it in perspective and how he arranges the material.

I chuckled when I read your comment about what he wrote on p. 4 and the blame resting on bush. I did a doubletake when I read that, too.

I'd like to know more about Wolfowitz's time as a dean. As an academic myself, I'd like to know how he was thought of by the faculty and others in the department.

I cringe when I think of someone like Wolfowitz as a dean. Ricks' comments about his faulty thinking are so disturbing. Academia is all about how to think clearly and objectively. It's about research, perspective, and learning from studies and the past.

And this man was a dean? However did this happen?!

If others are reading this book, maybe we could keep a thread for commentary alive as we read it.



Cher

[H2O Man]

9. That's a good idea.

I'm interested in others' thoughts on the book, and would like to keep a running thread. It is the type of book that I would encourage other folks to read. I find myself reading a lot of books that other DUers recommend, so maybe a discussion here would spark wider interest.

Regarding Wolfowitz as a dean .... I think it's an interesting topic. In "House of War," James Carroll focuses some attention on the role that universities have played in promoting the militarization of our society post-WW2. Wolfowitz's position was, I think, part of that process.

[KoKo]

11. Maybe one of the "overlooked" stories is the rise of the "Academic

Think Tanks" and the connection with major Universities. It seems that while the "Conservatives & Neo-Conseratives" were on the rise and moving into the Think Tanks from Universities, the RW was doing the drumbeat propaganda in the MSM that American Colleges and Universities were filled with "Liberal/Hippies" left over from the 60's that were ruining our kids minds with their "peacenik" teachings. Classic case of how the Right Wing used "Liberal" in labeling Universities and the Media while they were filling both with their hand picked Religious Conservatives along with the Neo-Cons and Straussian devotees. We need to learn that whatever the RW makes up a label for as "Liberal" is always the opposite of what's really going on. They are great at throwing up "smokescreens" to hide their evil doing.

I'm glad to hear Ricks focuses on Wolfowitz part in this immoral war. He's (Wolfowitz) such a benign looking person one wonders how he could have had so much influence. Yet Michael Moore was onto him from the beginning.

Thanks for the thread on the Ricks book. :-)'s

[H2O Man]

14. Yep.

Science has been used in large part to make advances in our ability to wage war.

[autorank]

27. You are hitting the bulls eye here on 'para-academic' enterprise

The think tanks, policy centers, in the DC area are there for a reason-to put the stamp of academic
approval on policy enterprises. They've been around forever but the Heritage Institute was so
successful in littering the airwaves with "experts" it became a model. Now there are right wing
non profit, para academic centers all over the DC area. Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute
were mainstays. AEI has gone overboard to the right and has lost any objective status whosoever.
Brookings still has credibility.

The can be up to 100%!!! What do they care if some screw ball funds a strange program, they're making a
boatload and the centers may have little contact with students, none often. Unlike science
'partnerships' where there is real money to be made, these political institutes again piggy back on
the credibility of an academic setting while they produce material harshly critical of academia.


It's a game of deception and disinformation. Real academics exist in a world where their positions have to [br />be reviewed and challenged. Doesn't always work but at least there is a process in place for review.
These free standing and university based agit prop machines simply produce nice journals and .pdfs
with sterling 'graphic qualities' which, unfortunately, gives them an entree as experts. They're
nothing more than shills and pitch men for the most intellectually dishonest movement we've seen in
this country. These folks make the "know nothings" look brilliant and informed.

[H2O Man]

28. Well said. n/t

[texanshatingbush]

17. Wolfie's tenure as Dean

I, too, was curious about Wolfowitz' time as a Dean, so I googled Wiki......here's an excerpt:

"From 1993 to 2001 Wolfowitz centered himself in academia where he was dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and was instrumental in adding more than $75 million to the endowment, adding an international finance concentration as part of the curriculum and combining the various Asian studies programs into one department. He also put his years of political and defense experience to good use as a foreign policy advisor to Bob Dole on the 1996 U.S. Presidential election campaign and as a paid consultant for aerospace and defense conglomerate Northrop Grumman."

Interesting to see who his associations were with over the years.....as in a Charles Dickens novel, everyone seems ultimately related to each other somehow in the current cabal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz

[H2O Man]

18. It seems that such

positions are not uncommon for people like Wolfowitz and Gates. And, of course, Paul Nitze.

[LSK]

26. start a thread in the book forum on it

Threads dont sink as fast as they do here in GD.

[CrispyQ]

8. Another older thread in the non-fiction forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x4167

A few interesting comments there you might like to read.

[H2O Man]

10. Thank you.

Interesting thread.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. Very interesting but flawed.

Skip to the back and read his prescriptions and you will learn that discouragingly he is in the end yet another stay-the-courser. Sure it is a fiasco, but we can still get it right. Appallingly he cites our adventure in the Philippines as a successful example of a counter insurgency, ignoring it seems that success required an astounding slaughter of the residents of the region.

Other annoyances: he documents the massive failure of the Bremer regime in great detail but he never asks (and certainly doesn't answer) the key question of WHY Bremer goes against all military advice and proceeds to do everything wrong.

Well worth reading as an honest appraisal from what I can only conclude is a pro-war perspective, and as a great reference source.

[H2O Man]

15. i've glanced at the back

of the book since reading your post. I'll read it closer, of course. I think that he has long been fascinated by military history, and as such, may be prone to believing that there is a military solution to the horrors that Bush & Co have created in Iraq. It will be interesting to see if he makes adjustments in his thinking in upcoming months.

[motocicleta]

49. Interesting

I read the entire book, and his conclusion led me to think he did not wish to "stay the course", but that his understanding of the military, cultural, political, and religious issues surrounding the situation in Iraq led him to posit several options for what will take place there.

Plus, his vision of how to fix it involves a huge, unprecedented troop increase, I believe, something on the magnitude of four times as large a force as we have there now. That is not "staying the course", and I suspect the author knows damn well that it will never happen, but he is not shying away from what he thinks is the right thing to do even if wildly unpopular.

[maine_raptor]

13. I got my hands on it when it first can out, H2O Man

It's a great read and full of fun facts you can try out on your freeper friends. :thumbsup:

Yea, Rick was a stay-the-courser, but that was when the book was published (actually before, if you count the time for proof-reading, gallery prints, etc.). I've heard him lately and I my impression is that he's of a "get-out-now-or-asap" mind.

The biggest problem I had with the book was that I could only read about 1/2 a chapter at a sitting before launching into a tirade about the rampant stupidity Rick's exposes.

You will enjoy it I'm sure, but watch the BP.

[H2O Man]

16. One of the things

that stood out to me in the beginning of the book is where he connects, in the third paragraph on page 36, the Wolfowitz agenda with the activities of two Senators, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. It is something that progressive democrats need to keep in mind in 2007.

[Morgana LaFey]

30. Progressive Democrats already know --

about Lieberman. :hi: That's why they threw him out in CT primaries.

[fishnfla]

19. the military POV caught my attention

the second half of the book is all boots on the ground
dissention in the ranks , all over the place. pay special attention to the how to stop an insurgeny discussion

[H2O Man]

22. One of the things

that I've enjoyed doing in the past few weeks is getting the point of view of a childhood friend, now a retired Marine, who I had fallen out of touch with after high school. One of the great fictions being promoted by those who deal in "perception management" is that military folk and their families are big on the Bush-Cheney policies. He notes that there is a lot of what he calls "brain washing" in terms of the people doing the fighting, but he questions when the leadership will stop waiting until after they are retired to say, "No, Mr. President. What you are doing threatens the Constitution I am sworn to uphold."

[Hamlette]

20. when you finish, read Imperial Life in the Emerald City

it's about what was going on in the Green Zone, so same war from a different vantage point and different stories which will outrage you.

My current :heart: book on Iraq.

[H2O Man]

23. Sounds good.

It has actually been on my list for a while. I absolutely will get to it soon. Thanks!

[Lisa]

32. I took it to work, and my liberal boss scooped it up before I'd finished ...

I let him borrow it over the holidays, because he'd seen the interview with the author on Jon Stewart's show, and was desperate to read it.

It really is excellent. I cried when I got to the part about the cats.

[Hamlette]

33. I read it on vacation with 3 friends, I couldn't stop reading it aloud to them

"it only gets worse, listen to this" I'd start then read them a page or two from the book.

Wait til you get to the part about rebuilding the health care system. They hired this guy who had the credentials but fired him after a month because although he had a wall full of degrees he didn't have a picture with himself with Bush (not loyal enough even though he'd not done anything considered disloyal) and hired a guy with a social work degree whose claim to fame was establishing anti abortion clinics in Minnesota (or one of those cold states.) Remember that the hospitals had all been looted, no equipment, no drugs, blood on the floors and walls, toilets all backed up. Our guy in Iraq decides that the most urgent health concern is a stop smoking campaign so he decides to spend all of the dollars from the US on 1. a program to stop smoking, 2. a new maternity hospital and 3. reorganizing and privatizing the system for distribution of pharmaceuticals in Iraq.

Not cleaning up, repairing or restocking the hospitals in Iraq. Not providing clean water. (Some areas of Iraq have had cholera outbreaks.) No. This guy decides the number one health concern in Iraq is smoking.

Unfreakingbelievable.

[CrispyQ]

36. I'm picking it up tomorrow at my library.

FIVE out of five stars based on 25 reviews at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Inside/dp/1400044871/sr=8-1/qid=1167188365/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2338533-6255352?ie=UTF8&s=books

[Captain Hilts]

37. Halliburton killing the cats was the icing on the cake. nt

[Lisa]

48. yes -- it just seemed to sum up the callous, kafkaesque, mean-spirited essence

... of the way those in charge seemed to operate.

I felt kind of guilty for feeling sorry about the "disposal" of the pets, given how much awful stuff was going on in the rest of the country (dozens of innocent Iraqis, including children, probably died at the same time as that vignette was unfolding ... and thousands were suffering in what were supposed to be hospitals and clinics).

But in a way, it's just another facet of the corruption and incompetence that is described so clearly in the rest of the book. They didn't care about the animals, and they didn't care about the Iraqi people -- and now we are seeing the fruits of that attitude.

Thanks for posting, MookieWilson ... now I don't feel so alone.

[Laurab]

43. I second that - or actually, it looks like 3rd or 4th

I read that one not too long ago, I read Fiasco quite a while ago, in fact, I've read so many that I can't recall which one was which, but Imperial Life certainly stayed with me.

I just finished a book called "What Was Asked of Us" - it was an oral history by a Canadian author, which basically just let the soldiers and marines talk. I'd recommend that one, too - an interesting story from that one was that a soldier got to Iraq, and found that the troop before his had used pictures of Rumsfelled for target practice, and he got quite a kick out of that.

There were about 30 interviewed for the book - all kinds, and the book had no agenda but to let them tell their stories, still I think anyone who read it would just shake their head and ask what the hell we're doing there.

[jonnyblitz]

21. I am on a waiting list for this book at my local public library.

I will read it as soon as it is available to me. :thumbsup:

[smoogatz]

24. I think it does an excellent job of documenting the run-up to the war,

the invasion, and the aftermath, from the P.O.V. of the U.S. military--which is, collectively, the "protagonist" in Ricks's world-view. As other posters have pointed out, its conclusions are drawn from the same P.O.V.--and are therefore flawed. Ricks is trying to make the case that if only the civilian leadership hadn't screwed up the number of troops and pretty much every element of the occupation in the early going, and if only the military top echelons hadn't forgotten the lessons learned in fighting the Vietnam insurgency, things might have turned out differently. I tend to agree more with people like Juan Cole, who make a pretty compelling argument that the rationale for the invasion was idiotic and uninformed from the get-go, and doomed, most likely, no matter what--even with a well-trained occupation force of 500,000 or more--which was never on the table as far as Rumsfeld was concerned.

[LSK]

25. I just started reading it last week and find it superior to Woodwards book

He pretty flatly states that they had already decided to invade Iraq by the summer of 2002.

I also found it very interesting how he says the Clinton bombings of 1998 broke Saddams will and destroyed much of his WMD infrastructure. Saddam was supposed very much afraid of being caught with WMD after that and only pretended to have WMD to scare off regional threats like Iran.

[Hamlette]

45. it is better than Woodward BUT, Woodward's "good name" gave

State of Denial a larger audience. My husband read State of Denial while he would never have picked up any of the other books (I'm hoping that now I might get him to read another one, a better one.)

I've also heard some talking heads say: "I read Woodward's book and then some others" as the reason they turned around. It's acceptable for republicans to read Woodward, even if he's trashing one of them. And there were a few new tid bits in his book.

[H2O Man]

47. Woodward's book

had a good deal of value, because of the exact reason that you point out -- it reached an audience who would accept something that Woodward says, even though they might refuse to believe the exact same thing if Hersch wrote it. I do not like Woodward, certainly do not trust him, and don't think he is a particularly talented author. But it is a good book.

[Jack Rabbit]

29. I got it for Christmas

It was a present form my son.

[KoKo]

31. Good on You....your son is "Clued In" and knows what you are fighting for...

would that all our kids would understand.

[Blue_In_AK]

34. My husband's reading it right now...

He says it's excellent.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

35. I read "Fiasco," and it absolutely infuriated me.

And if you want to raise your blood pressure with another book, read "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- it's about the Coalition Provisional Authority and the contractors living in the Green Zone in Baghdad, mainly a bunch of very young, inexperienced but very well-connected to the Republican Party, making a ton of money to completely fuck up the "management" of the so-called "government" of Iraq. You just can't believe what went on there, and what a disaster these idiots caused. Read the book, then scream and throw things.

[illinoisprogressive]

40. I jst got that along with

fiasco and Greatest Story ever sold. I couldn't decide so I got all. I'm a bookaholic.

[Hailtothechimp]

38. I loved his analogy about "Mission Accomplished"

He said it was like one team tearing down the goalposts at halftime in a football game.

Quite sad that it's turned out that way, too.

[illinoisprogressive]

39. I have the book but, am reading at the moment

his co-worker's book, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold, by Frank Rich. Fiasco is next.
Rich's book is marvelous. Very very good. If you get a chance I do recommend you read it.

[Disturbed]

41. I am now reading "Frontier Justice"-Scott Ritter

"Fiasco" will be next. Too bad the American Public didn't heed Ritter before the Illegal Invasion!

[catchnrelease]

42. My sister gave me her copy last night.

Said it's very good, but we didn't get a chance to discuss it. Can't wait to get into it.

Also want to read Hubris by Isikoff and Corn, has anyone read that one? There are so many books coming out now that are "exposing" the failures of the * admin.....where have they been for the last six years????

[H2O Man]

44. Hubris

is very good. Again, it is primarily things that most DUers are familiar with. But it's nice to see it in a format that reaches a different audience.

[Me.]

46. K

but no R due to time limits. Wish they weren't, and on editing also. Just saying...