Steven Vincent journeyed twice to Iraq, paying his own way, traveling without security or official connections, living by his wits. His four months in the war zone included a foray into the infamous Mosque of Ali in Najaf, a confrontation with Ayatollah Sistani’s bodyguards, a brush with death in a Karbala bombing, meetings with assorted Western "peace activists," and run-ins with Iraqi "authorities" who alternately suspected him of being a CIA agent or a terrorist.
Vincent’s encounters with doctors and cab drivers, imams and housewives, politicos and poets—and one unforgettable woman in Basra—provided him with special insight into what Iraqis think of their liberation, of America, and of the war. He describes a tormented society whose inhabitants—troubling, infuriating, yet often inspiring—survived the ghoulish dictatorship of Saddam Hussein only to face the death cult of radical Islam.
The war on terror and the war in Iraq, Vincent concludes, are closely connected. Victory in both conflicts requires that we look with a sympathetic but unsparing eye at the Iraqi people and the whole Islamic world.