Thomas E. Ricks

Based on unprecedented real-time access to the military's entire chain of command, "The Gamble" is the definitive account of the insurgency within the US military that led to a radical shift in America's strategy in Iraq - and the bloody implementation of that strategy on the ground. In his international bestseller Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks gave us the definitive reckoning with what went so wrong in Iraq. The story "The Gamble" tells is how, when the war was at its darkest hour, a group of dissident junior commanders and their civilian allies did an end run around their superiors in the military establishment and seized control of the war. The result was 'the Surge', one of the American military's boldest strategic gambles since the landings at Inchon. General David Petraeus gave military expert Thomas E. Ricks extraordinary privileged access to himself and his team during the past two years, and the result is a chronicle of astonishing vividness and analytical depth. It is the story of military leadership in the crucible of war, under excruciating political pressure at home. It is also the story of the soldiers who executed the strategy out in the field. Ricks concludes that the war likely will last for many years to come - and that it will not be remembered for the reasons we think.

Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began. Since early 2007 a new military order has directed American strategy. Some top U.S. officials now in Iraq actually opposed the 2003 invasion, and almost all are severely critical of how the war was fought from then through 2006. At the core of the story is General David Petraeus, a military intellectual who has gathered around him an unprecedented number of officers with both combat experience and Ph.D.s. Underscoring his new and unorthodox approach, three of his key advisers are quirky foreigners-an Australian infantryman-turned- anthropologist, an antimilitary British woman who is an expert in the Middle East, and a Mennonite-educated Palestinian pacifist. The Gamble offers news breaking information, revealing behind-the-scenes disagreements between top commanders. We learn that almost every single officer in the chain of command fought the surge. Many of Petraeus's closest advisers went to Iraq extremely pessimistic, doubting that the surge would have any effect, and his own boss was so skeptical that he dispatched an admiral to Baghdad in the summer of 2007 to come up with a strategy to replace Petraeus's. That same bosslater flew to Iraq to try to talk Petraeus out of his planned congressional testimony. The Gamble examines the congressional hearings through the eyes of Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and their views of the questions posed by the 2008 presidential candidates. For Petraeus, prevailing in Iraq means extending the war. Thomas E. Ricks concludes that the war is likely to last another five to ten years-and that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that "the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened."

Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, puts forth in Fiasco a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq, now with a preface on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel—including more than one hundred senior officers—and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.

Cutting through the headlines and spin, 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.

Las vidas, en ocasiones paralelas, de dos luchadores por la democracia.Tanto George Orwell como Winston Churchill vieron peligrar su vida a mediados de la década de 1930: Orwell por un disparo en el cuello en la guerra civil española y Churchill en un accidente de coche en Nueva York. De haber muerto entonces, la historia apenas les recordaria. Churchill era un politico acabado, sospechoso para su clase y para su propio partido, y Orwell era un novelista del que como mucho se habria podido decir que tenia un exito moderado.Ambos mantenian una actitud antitotalitaria que no contaba con demasiados partidarios en aquella epoca. La democracia habia quedado desacreditada en muchos circulos y los dirigentes autoritarios, de uno y otro color, estaban, en cambio, al alza. Churchill y Orwell, cada uno por su lado, fueron capaces de ver que lo que se hallaba en peligro era la libertad del ser humano y que, ya fuera comunista o fascista, un Gobierno que negaba a la poblacion sus derechos constituia una amenaza contra la que habia que luchar.Los dos, uno en la arena politica y el otro en el campo de las letras, demostraron en los años siguientes estar a la altura de los tiempos. Y aunque Churchill jugo un papel mayor en la derrota de Hitler y el Eje, Orwell creo conRebelion en la granja y198...

Tanto George Orwell como Winston Churchill vieron peligrar su vida a mediados de la década de 1930: Orwell por un disparo en el cuello en la guerra civil española y Churchill en un accidente de coche en Nueva York. De haber muerto entonces, la historia apenas les recordaria. Churchill era un politico acabado, sospechoso para su clase y para su propio partido, y Orwell era un novelista del que como mucho se habria podido decir que tenia un exito moderado.Ambos mantenian una actitud antitotalitaria que no contaba con demasiados partidarios en aquella epoca. La democracia habia quedado desacreditada en muchos circulos y los dirigentes autoritarios, de uno y otro color, estaban, en cambio, al alza. Churchill y Orwell, cada uno por su lado, fueron capaces de ver que lo que se hallaba en peligro era la libertad del ser humano y que, ya fuera comunista o fascista, un Gobierno que negaba a la poblacion sus derechos constituia una amenaza contra la que habia que luchar.Los dos, uno en la arena politica y el otro en el campo de las letras, demostraron en los años siguientes estar a la altura de los tiempos. Y aunque Churchill jugo un papel mayor en la derrota de Hitler y el Eje, Orwell creo con Rebelion en la granja y 1984 dos metaforas inmortales sobre los peligros del totalitarismo cuya influencia llega hasta hoy. Sus vidas, las de ambos, fueron un canto al poder de las convicciones morales, y al valor que se requiere para mantenerse fiel a ellas, contra viento y marea.