Read these books about Iraq

These books will educate, infuriate, agitate, captivate, deflate and penetrate you. I've read 'em all, just before I came to Iraq or after I got here. They're all over the political spectrum, so there's something to please--or P.O.--everybody.

SHAKU MAKU: ON THE GROUND IN OCCUPIED IRAQ, Phil Borden, Outskirts Press. Phil, the friend of a good friend of mine, John Needham (retired LA Times editorial board member), spent a year off and on in Iraq as a business development expert. He learned that "meaning well and doing well are, well, two different things." The details and literate prose make this a fine read, and just in my brief time here, his experiences resonate with the realities unfolding in Iraq. "Shaku Maku" means "What's up?" or "Howzit hangin'?" as colloquially used by Iraqis.

MOMENT OF TRUTH IN IRAQ, Michael Yon, Richard Vigilante Books. Yon has become famous/notorious in the blogosphere--where many of his words appear--for his closeness to American troops. If there's any Western journalist who's seen more contact and combat, I dunno who it is. He believes the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq--not with its overwhelming firepower, but with its values, as shown by officers and soldiers and Marines on the ground.

HOUSE TO HOUSE: A SOLDIER'S MEMOIR, David Bellavia, with John R. Bruning, Free Press. A highly decorated grunt's memoir of one of the sieges of Fallujah. The moving and morbid scenes of hand-to-hand fighting--and the complete self-awareness of what they do to human beings--make this account one of the handful of military memoirs that rank as real literature.

BLACKWATER: THE RISE OF THE WORLD'S MOST POWEREFUL MERCENARY ARMY, Jeremy Scahill, Nation Books. More than 500 pages of closely documented insight into the North Carolina company that has built an efficient and ruthless paramilitary institution. Its thousands of "mercenaries," as Scahill calls them, operate in several countries--and, most disturbingly, in the U.S. (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the U.S.-Mexico border). Besides deploying private armies, Blackwater seeks to influence politics with its radically conservative evangelical Christianity.

THE PROSECUTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH FOR MURDER, Vincent Bugliosi, Vanguard Books. Just out, this lays out the case to hold the president legally liable for the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans in Iraq. Bugliosi, best known for his successful prosecution of Charles Manson and Family ("Helter Skelter"), won 21 murder cases without a loss as L.A. DA. Just as he demolished JFK assassination conspiracy theorists in his last book, Bugliosi scrupulously and persuasively builds the legal framework to not only bring Bush before a jury of his peers but to convict him.

Something here, as I said, for just about everybody.

If you've got any to add, please bring 'em on in.