The Mess

Peter Galbraith in the New York Review of Books:

Two books, George Packer's The Assassins' Gate and L. Paul Bremer's My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, written with Malcolm McConnell, are essential for those who want to understand what went wrong. Packer's book is written with great clarity and draws on his experience as one of The New Yorker's more perceptive reporters. He is clearly a thorough and careful notetaker. As a result, the people he writes about—Washington neoconservatives, CPA bureaucrats, and ordinary Iraqis whose lives were turned upside down by decisions made elsewhere—speak to the reader in their own voices. In analyzing the war, Packer begins with the ideologies that shaped its architects' thinking and then brilliantly describes the unrealistic assumptions and bureaucratic maneuvering that resulted in the US taking over Iraq with no plan for its postwar administration. Bremer, as his title suggests, does not believe that the occupation was a complete disaster. He provides a briskly written account of an eventful year, assigning most of the blame to others, notably Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, and the members of the Iraqi Governing Council whom he appointed. The value of his book lies in his often inadvertent revelations of failure.

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