In his follow-up to the number-one New York Times best seller Fiasco, considered a definitive account of the Iraq invasion, Pulitzer Prize-winner Ricks delivers his second news-breaking installment of the Iraq war story.
This depiction of the war since 2005 draws from hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top military officers, revealing that, though there may be a security plan in place, an exit strategy is still nowhere to be seen, says Ricks.
Bio
Thomas E. Ricks
Thomas E. Ricks is a Washington Post Pentagon and military correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner.
Ricks lectures widely to the military and is a member of Harvard University's Senior Advisory Council on the Project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. Ricks is the author of the bestselling books Making the Corps, A Soldier's Duty, and Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq.
Brief conflict in 2003 between Iraq and a combined force of troops largely from the U.S. and Great Britain; and a subsequent U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and protracted Iraqi armed insurgency against it. The trade embargo and weapons-inspection process that the UN imposed on Iraq following the Persian Gulf War (199091) had partly fallen into abeyance by 2001. U.S. Pres. George W. Bush argued that the September 11 attacks on the U.S. in that same year highlighted the threat to U.S. security posed by hostile countries such as Iraq. In November 2002 the UN issued Security Council Resolution 1441 demanding that Iraq readmit weapons inspectors and comply with all previous resolutions. Although inspectors did return to Iraq, Bush and Blair declared in early 2003 (despite objections by many world leaders) that Iraq was continuing to hinder UN inspections and that it still retained proscribed weapons. On March 20 the U.S. and Britain (with smaller troop contingents from other countries) launched a series of air attacks on Iraq, and a ground invasion followed. Iraqi forces were rapidly defeated, and on April 9 U.S. forces took control of the capital, Baghdad. British forces completed their occupation of the southern city of Al-Basrah the same day, and by May 1 the major combat operations of the invasion had been completed. However, the U.S. and other occupying forces were soon embroiled in escalating guerrilla warfare in Iraq that hindered Iraq's recovery and killed thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians. The war, long opposed by many throughout the world, also became increasingly unpopular in the U.S.
Such weak rhetoric, "can we try for war crimes," do you even know what a war crime is? Do you even understand the laws of war? The same lame statements all the time by people who never served a day in their life. It's so boorish.
Yeah, we don't know yet if we survived the bush years. but acting stupidly like bush is wrong at any time. We have to think it through and do the right thing no matter how satisfying it would be to bring the troops home now.
What a sad situation. I think Obama means well by saying he wants to pull troops out in 18 months, but Ricks is probably right by saying that's totally unrealistic. Longest war in American history, that is a scary thought.