USA: book on Iraq war reviewed

From London daily The Morning Star:

Military madness

(Sunday 10 September 2006)

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E Ricks
(Allen Lane, £25)

GEOFF SIMONS examines a big book on the huge nightmare caused by President Bush’s ill-considered assault on Iraq and its people.

THIS big book on the US-led occupation of Iraq is written by the Washington Post’s senior Pentagon correspondent, who, until the end of 1999, covered the US military for the Wall Street Journal [also known as the ‘War Street Journal’].

Ricks has reported on US military activities all over the world.

The present volume relies partly on a steady stream of emails from soldiers in the field.

We get what we might expect. This is a weighty chronology of journalese which charts the catastrophic US arrogance and brutality that destroyed a country.

Ricks is quite clear about it all.

The US decision “to invade Iraq may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy.”

And the “incompetence” and “arrogance” do not just belong to George W Bush.

Ricks notes that “it takes more than one person to make a mess as big as Iraq.”