AMY EDDINGS:
From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. Brooke Gladstone is away this week. I'm Amy Eddings.
BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield.
[NEWS CLIP/[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]:
FEMALE CORRESPONDENT:
Well, little did we know when the Golden Mosque was bombed 15 months ago the horrors that would follow in Iraq. Now we do know.
MALE CORRESPONDENT:
And now that shattered country is bracing for more as the desecrated Shiite shrine is hit again. What problems are to follow? That's what we're looking into. You are--
[END OF NEWS CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD:
A bombing at the al-Askari Mosque and fears of Shiite reprisals. If it sounds familiar, it's because it happened before, 16 months ago at the same sacred Shiite shrine. Indeed, that 2006 bombing has been widely interpreted by the administration and the media alike as a turning point in the war, when a troubled occupation devolved into the chaos of sectarian violence.

But according to Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post, the official line oversimplifies and distorts the story. He joins us now. Tom, welcome back to On the Media.
THOMAS RICKS:
Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:
Before we discuss this week's bombing and the response, I want to talk about the response to the first bombing. President Bush invoked that attack earlier this year in a speech announcing his new strategy for Iraq. It sounded like this.
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH:
They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shi'a Islam, the Golden Mosque of Samarra, in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shi'a population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shi'a elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads, and the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.
BOB GARFIELD:
Now, the President wasn't entirely wrong, but in that speech he left some things out, didn't he?
THOMAS RICKS:
Well, there's a really mixed view among experts in Iraq as to whether the Golden Dome bombing back in February, 2006 really did trigger a civil war. Two reasons for that. First is a lot of people think that a low-level civil war was already well under way by the time of the mosque bombing.

The second thing is while there was a short spike in violence right after the mosque bombing, violence actually went down. If you look at the Pentagon report on Iraq that was just released, it actually shows in one chart that violence went down somewhat later that spring and then spiked terrifically in late May, June and July of 2006 and continued to be very intense all the way through the fall, which indicates it might not have been the mosque bombing as much as another event, which was the failure to form an Iraqi government for several months until May. And then when it did come together, it was clearly a Shiite government.

If you actually think that violence is related to other events, that's the event that's more proximate to the violence, not the Golden Dome Mosque bombing.
BOB GARFIELD:
Okay, let's turn to this week. The shrine was bombed again, this time toppling two golden minarets, and the press' attention turned to the risk of a new cycle of reprisal and re-reprisal and so on.

Well, what struck me was how the reporting implicitly accepted the idea that the first bombing had been the war's turning point. The New York Times called it a watershed, The L.A. Times called it a turning point, and your paper noted that the first bombing had sparked an increase in sectarian violence, without really offering any context. Have the media been suckered into a revisionist history of the war?
THOMAS RICKS:
Well, I think the issue is not whether Samarra is significant. There's no question that it was significant. The question is was everything going well until then? That's what the real argument is.

And I flatly did not think so. That's one reason that narrative bothered me. I remember being in Baghdad in January and February of '06 and being kind of stunned. I had been there before a lot of times, and it just struck me as awful.

I remember one smart Army major describing it to me as the pure Hobbesian state, and it really was. It was a broken-up city, divided into small warring camps. And I go back into U.S. bases at that time, January and February '06, and they'd say, no, things are - steady progress is being made. And it just didn't make any sense.

If there's anything that's characterized the U.S. effort in Iraq, it's being generally 6 to 12 months behind events and understanding the situation on the ground. And Samarra was one of those events that made them play catch-up. I don't think a lot of people disagree with that. But I think the disagreement is over whether everything was going swimmingly.
BOB GARFIELD:
Let me ask you one final thing, Tom. In recent congressional testimony, the administration and the Pentagon seemed to have pretty much stopped even trying to suggest that, as they have been suggesting for five years, that a few high-profile bombings belie an otherwise improving security situation.

At this stage, does it much matter whether Samarra was a genuine turning point or whether the Sunnis or the Shi'a are more culpable? A lost cause is a lost cause.
THOMAS RICKS:
I think that absolutely it matters for this reason. Clausewitz says that the first and really only task of the top commander is to understand the nature of the conflict in which he is engaged. We have not done well, or our generals in particular have not done well in doing that in Iraq. If you don't know why things are happening, then your understanding of events is going to simply be incorrect.

Sometimes the U.S. in Iraq reminds me of what Warren Buffet said about playing poker. If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you don't know who the patsy at the table is, you are the patsy.
BOB GARFIELD:
[LAUGHS]
THOMAS RICKS:
And I worry that sometimes we're the patsy. We don't understand the meaning and significance of the events swirling around us. And the Samarra bombing may be one of the prime examples of that problem.
BOB GARFIELD:
All right, Tom. Thanks very much.
THOMAS RICKS:
Thank you for having me.
BOB GARFIELD:
Thomas Ricks is a military correspondent for The Washington Post.