Iraq’s dirty reality defies Hollywood shine

In his debut novel ‘Fives And Twenty Fives’, former marine Michael Pitre joins a long line of US writers who fictionalised their war experience, reports Michael Clifford

WHEN Michael Pitre turns on his TV and sees the reports from Iraq, he never asks himself whether it was worth it.

Pitre served as a US marine in two tours in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. He was stationed in the Anbar provide. His base at the time has been overrun by the Islamic State, inflicting its medieval brutality as an instrument of governance. Where the US military had once presented itself as harbingers of a bright new dawn, now the people are living through the blackest nightmare.