Fiasco

I finished Fiasco last night. I highly recommend this read to anyone interested in how we got to where we are today in Iraq and the Middle East. Poor planning, very bad intelligence summaries and a lack of understanding of what we were there to do once we got there. This is incredibly well- written with interviews, facts(can you believe it?) and references. The author, Thomas Ricks, has a Pulitzer Prize in his resume and it shows. Most of the finger-pointing is at Rumsfield and Wolfowitz in the Defense Department for basically ignoring the Phase IV ops, what you do once the combat is over and then for allowing us to forget everything we ever learned about counter-insurgency strategy in Vietnam. I have hope that we can make amends for the wrongs and I pray for a positive outcome in the Middle East but it's going to be an uphill battle and could turn around and bite us anyday...
Here's an Amazon link with a summary and reviews.

Enjoying the thunderstorms, hail and rain today from my window. Shadow is somewhere sleeping in Dylan's room, Keller is in his crate in the garage and I need to get back to work...

See ya!