NO ONE BOTHERS to ask Washington Post journalist Thomas E. Ricks why he has called his first book Fiasco. An unflinching investigation into the US military's disastrous 'Adventure in Iraq', the title speaks for itself. This reticence is a shame, if only because the story behind Ricks' choice is so sombrely appropriate.
In 2004, Ricks was embedded with the 1st Infantry and heading for Najaf, where Moqtada al-Sadr and his militias were fighting. 'Just as we crossed the Euphrates, we ran into a prepared ambush,' Ricks says when we meet in London. 'We were bombed. There were machine guns. A soldier was killed and a couple more wounded. The next morning, I e-mailed my editor: 'I have the title for my book.' People said, 'Are you sure you want to call it that? Bush has just had a successful election. Isn't this thing really over?' I replied, 'I don't think so'.'
Ricks' forensic denunciation of the Bush administration, the US Congress and the leadership of the US military has divided readers. A best-seller in America, the book has gained friends in unexpected places. 'The number of soldiers writing to thank me is really surprising,' he says. 'A battalion commander thanked me for saying publicly what they had been saying privately. People who work for [Secretary of Defence Donald] Rumsfeld have said thank you. One wrote, 'You have really captured the conversation that has been building for the last several years'.'
The feedback hasn't been entirely positive, however. 'The US is very polarised right now,' Ricks says, calmly. 'So I have not been surprised by the number of death threats I've received. It's a pretty rough environment to be a journalist right now.' Fortunately, as the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, Ricks is used to dealing with more daunting adversaries than psychotic readers.
His globetrotting began early. Born in Massachusetts, he moved to Kabul as a teenager when his father's academic job took him to Afghanistan.
'It was really formative,' Ricks says. 'I was in the Afghan Junior Ski Patrol. Skied up in the Salong Pass. Had a hoot of a time, loved the country, the people, the history. It's astonishingly beautiful, especially up in the mountain valleys.'
Twenty-five years later, Ricks returned to Kabul to cover 2002's Anaconda Battle. 'My old neighbourhood was badly hit by the three-way civil war before the Taleban took over. My old house was occupied, it seemed, by Shi'ite militia. But I'd go back to Afghanistan in a heartbeat. I don't much like Iraq as a country, but I love Afghanistan.'