Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?

Thomas Powers reviews the following books in his May 29, 2008 New York Review of Books article:

• The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes
• The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War by Ali Ahmad Jalali and Lester W. Grau
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
• The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America by Kenneth M. Pollack
• The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran by Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar
• The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan's Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire by Anthony Arnold
• The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan translated from the Russian and edited by Lester W. Grau
• Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy by Andrew Cockburn
• Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon by A.J. Rossmiller
• The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost by the Russian General Staff, translated from the Russian and edited by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress

[JH]