It took a while for me to finish reading this (three weeks, which for me is an eternity, most things take a day or two days tops, War and Peace took three) but the sheer density of this thing cannot be understated. Ricks breaks down what has gone wrong in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, spending most of the book dealing with 03-05 and why the things people were doing did not, would not and in many cases could not work.

It is a devastating, non-partisan look at how things went horribly wrong and in part tries to deal with why. I finished and think the medals of freedom given to Bremer, Franks and Tenet were actually given freeing us of them. This is a vital read for having an understanding of what is going on in Iraq.