Reply #24: I think it does an excellent job of documenting the run-up to the war,

[smoogatz]

the invasion, and the aftermath, from the P.O.V. of the U.S. military--which is, collectively, the "protagonist" in Ricks's world-view. As other posters have pointed out, its conclusions are drawn from the same P.O.V.--and are therefore flawed. Ricks is trying to make the case that if only the civilian leadership hadn't screwed up the number of troops and pretty much every element of the occupation in the early going, and if only the military top echelons hadn't forgotten the lessons learned in fighting the Vietnam insurgency, things might have turned out differently. I tend to agree more with people like Juan Cole, who make a pretty compelling argument that the rationale for the invasion was idiotic and uninformed from the get-go, and doomed, most likely, no matter what--even with a well-trained occupation force of 500,000 or more--which was never on the table as far as Rumsfeld was concerned.