As a reporter for the staunchly antiwar Pacifica Radio, twenty-seven-year-old Aaron Glantz had spent much of early 2003 warning of catastrophe if the United States invaded Iraq. But, as he watched the statue of Saddam topple, he wondered whether he was mistaken: In interviews with regular Iraqis, he found wide support for the invasion. Then, public opinion changed. The U.S.-led Authority and its corporate contractors failed to restore the basic necessities of daily life, such as electricity and drinking water. Ravaged by looters, the streets remained unsafe. Regular Iraqis throughout the country were imprisoned and held incommunicado-many at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison-on the slightest suspicion.

And then in spring 2004, the U.S. military declared war on the anti-Saddam cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and simultaneously launched an unprovoked bombing campaign against the city of Fallujah, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and dramatically increasing support for an armed resistance. The U.S. attacks confounded many opponents of the old regime and plunged the nation into chaos. This chain of events served to transform the Americans, in Iraqi eyes, from liberators to brutal occupiers-a point of view that persists today and is likely to color American-Iraqi relations into the future. In How America Lost Iraq, Glantz tells his story of working far outside the so-called Green Zone, the U.

S.-protected turf from which most journalistic reports are filed. Glantz's reporting reveals truths that most media outlets missed, such as: the desertion and mass mutiny of the U.S.-trained Iraqi army; the appalling level of civilian casualties and mass incarcerations; the failure of contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel to supply Iraqis with the ordinary necessities of daily life; and almost every poll showing that the vast majority of Iraqis want the United States to leave-a figure confirmed by recent election results. Here is a clear-eyed and uncompromising account from a reporter who discovered how popular the U.S. presence was in Iraq-and who watched this change as the Bush administration mishandled the war.