Journalists often give political analyses of situations they have reported on, and all too often reach facile and laughably naive conclusions. Such is the case with this book. The author might have given us an interesting read if he had stuck to what he is qualified to comment on: himself and his experiences as a journalist. Whether out of false modesty or an inflated sense of his grasp of the situation in Iraq, he chose to weave his personal story around the much larger, vastly more complicated, and more important story of what is happening to the Iraqi people. His conclusions about whether the Iraq invasion was warranted are unsupported, and blatantly self-serving. It can't be a coincidence that a young man who received a large advance to write a book about his experiences during the invasion of Iraq sees the campaign as necessary and ultimately for the best. It certainly was for him!