To soldiers on the ground, most wars look like giant screwups. But the “Phase IV” aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom—intended to bring some semblance of civil order in the wake of the successful spring 2003 US invasion—eclipsed most running, jumping, and leaping records for military misfortune. Recently retired army colonel Peter R. Mansoor traces the trickle-down consequences of the Pentagon’s rosy insouciance in Baghdad at Sunrise, an insider’s account of his command year in Iraq at the head of thirty-five hundred personnel of the First Armored Division’s Ready First Combat Team, a mongrel