As the dreadful reality of the Coalition's defeat in Iraq begins to sink in, one question dominates Washington and London: why? In this controversial new book, award-winning journalist Jonathan Steele provides a stark and arresting answer: Bush and Blair were defeated from the day they decided to occupy the country. Iraq had had enough of foreign armies. Steele describes the memories of centuries of humiliations that have scarred the Iraqi national psyche, creating a powerful and deeply felt nationalism.Drawing his unique access to senior Western policymakers, Steele shows how the key players in the occupying coalition totally failed to inform themselves about this smouldering backhistory of resentment and suspicion. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with ordinary Iraqis, Steele shows for the first time how the staging posts of the conflict so familiar to Western newspaper readers were seen by the Iraqis themselves. Blending vivid reportage, informed analysis and sweeping historical narrative, "Defeat" is the definitive anatomy of an historic catastrophe.