Fiasco

Cutting through the headlines and spin about thw war in Iraq, this is the first book to give us a true picture of the reality on the ground, through the words of the people there - from commanders to intelligence officers, army doctors to ordinary soldiers. Providing eye-witness accounts that contradict the official stories and figures, they give a chilling picture of the deceit, stupidity, wishful thinking, lack of forward planning and total intellectual failure of those behind the invasion. The result is an extraordinary new insight into the plight of ordinary soldiers doing nightmarish jobs, and the real nature of the fighting in Iraq.

Thomas E. Ricks is the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent. Until the end of 1999 he had covered the US military for The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. He has been a member of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting. Thomas E. Ricks has lived in Afghanistan and in Hong Kong and is the author of Making the Corps and A Soldier's Duty.