Reporter to Tell Story about "How America Lost Iraq" on July 20

Journalist Aaron Glantz, son of UCSF professor Stanton Glantz, will talk about his new book,"How America Lost Iraq," at a special event on Wednesday, July 20 at UCSF.
Aaron Glantz
Aaron Glantz
Glantz's talk, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled from noon to 1 p.m. on July 20 in the Kalmanovitz Library, Lange Room, fifth floor, 530 Parnassus Ave. The event is cosponsored by the UCSF library and the Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education. A book signing by the author will follow and the University Store on the Parnassus campus will have books available for sale at the event. "This is not the happy story of liberating Iraq and replacing dictatorship with democracy that President Bush and the mainstream American media would have us believe," Glantz says in a press release.
"How America Lost Iraq" (Tarcher/Penguin, ISBN 1-58542-426-9; May 19, 2005; $23.95) tells the story of how the US government squandered, through a series of blunders and brutalities, the goodwill with which most Iraqis greeted the American invasion and the elation they felt at the fall of Saddam Hussein." Throughout the book, Glantz goes beyond the safety of the heavily protected Green Zone where most reporters remain to get at the truth of life in Iraq under the American occupation: the mass incarcerations, the brutally high levels of civilian casualties, the bombings of mosques, the repression of free speech, and the ongoing failure of contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel to provide Iraqis with water, telephone service, electricity and other basic needs. It is these acts, Glantz writes, which are fueling the insurgency and generating lasting enmity to the American presence in Iraq.

Related Links

Aaron Glantz website Shock and Awe: Writers of Many Stripes Grapple with Country Going off the Rails, (SF Chronicle)