'Fiasco' Author Reports On the Petraeus Report Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, discusses this week's long-awaited progress report from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the top two American officials in Iraq.

'Fiasco' Author Reports On the Petraeus Report

'Fiasco' Author Reports On the Petraeus Report

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Thomas Ricks wrote in Fiasco that the Iraq invasion "may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy." Maj. David Olson hide caption

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Maj. David Olson

Thomas Ricks wrote in Fiasco that the Iraq invasion "may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy."

Maj. David Olson

The Petraeus Report

NPR's news hub on the Petraeus Report gathers major NPR news coverage and analysis in one place.

Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, discusses this week's long-awaited progress report from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the top two American officials in Iraq.

Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of the best-selling book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. It's just come out in paperback.

He tells Terry Gross that in their Congressional testimony this week, Petraeus and Crocker essentially described Iraq as "a place teetering on the edge of disaster, where we have very few options, and where we have to really cross our fingers and hope for the best."