Reply #19: It's a good book but hard to read [View All]

[TayTay]

because all those errors resulted in so many Iraqi and American lives lost. It dovetails nicely with the James Reston (SP) book from a couple of months ago. This whole misadventure is just awful because it was so preventable.

The stuff on Rummy and his 'snowflakes' from on high is so arrogant. This guy was concerned with only one thing, consolidating power into the Pentagon. That part about him squeezing and squeezing the Generals to get fewer and fewer troops into the invasion is hard to read from this end of history. They wanted a war but they didn't want the cost and they didn't want to commit to what it would take to win a war.

It's a hard read for me. (I'm not qite finished either.) The invasion plans were all wrong, the 'plans' for the peace afterward were weak and not implemented and the whole thing was a major screwup. This is the authoritative look at what happened, but it's a hard thing to read. Those mistakes, allowing the insurgency to grow, allowing the looting, all that is just so damn sad.

Sigh! No wonder Sen. Kerry recommended this book. It is thorough and omplete. And disturbing.

What did you think?