Prating Priests, Miscreant Managers

Here's my Amazon review of "FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas E. Ricks.

I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, before Rove kicked the 9/11 Fear Machine into high gear for the mid-term elections.

FIASCO is a potent antidote to the base fear mongering that the Bush gang is now fully engaged in. Highly, highly recommended.

Walking Toward Wisdom, August 26, 2006

From the first page, it is clear why Thomas Ricks' FIASCO has climbed to the top of bestseller lists. In the highly politicized public debate on Iraq, Ricks is an authoritative voice reporting facts -- facts that were in such short supply in the run up to the war, in the wake of the invasion, and even now three and a half years later.

Facts, we learn in agonizing detail, were pushed aside or fabricated to support the invasion. Invasion plans developed under the Clinton administration, detailed plans that anticipated an insurgency and had contingencies for dealing with it were ignored. The post-invasion plan developed by the Bush administration on the other hand, was a confused PowerPoint presentation of 15 or so slides which offered nothing to the commanders on the ground but bullet-pointed jargon.

As Ricks tells us at the outset: "None of this was inevitable. It was made possible only through the intellectual acrobatics of simultaneously 'worst-casing' the threat present by Iraq while 'best-casing' the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country."

As you read FIASCO don't be surprised if you find yourself having to take frequent walks around the block to blow off a little steam. The exercise will do you good, and as you walk you may finally come to feel in your very bones as I have the vast ideological arrogance of the neo-con priesthood which argued for the war and the malevolent managerial incompetence of the Bush administration which had no plan to win the peace.