Oliver Poole

Oliver Poole was a Telegraph correspondent who was posted to Iraq between 2003 and 2006. In that time he gained firsthand insight into what went right and what went wrong following the invasion and the subsequent breakdown in society. He pulls no punches in this account of his time there and it makes depressing reading, half a million people dead (we can argue about that all day, it is his book I am quoting) and a society forced to turn to guns due to the total lack of security afforded them. While he learned plenty about Iraq, its people, the mistakes made and the inevitable problems faced he doesn't seem to have learned how to structure a book too well. That aside there is more than enough content to make up for the inconsistent pacing. The limited scope he takes helps to keep things personal which makes you confront the stories without the haze of familiarity we get when presented with them in more familiar media settings. This deserves to be read widely.… (plus d'informations)