The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Ricks, Thomas E., PUBLISHER: Penguin Press, "Fiasco," Thomas E. Ricksas #1 "New York Times" bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraqa"The Gamble" is the next news breaking installment 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 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 a new military order has directed American strategy. Some top U.S. officials now in Iraq actually opposed the invasion, and almost all are severely critical of how the war was fought from then through . 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 foreignersaan 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 Petraeusas 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 to come up with a strategy to replace Petraeusas. That same boss later 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 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 yearsaand that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that athe events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened.a