With the constantly changing situation in Iraq, any book published on the occupation and its consequences is likely to become irrelevant quickly unless it is written in a manner that is able to capture the underlying themes and realities of the occupation. Christian Parenti's The Freedom is able to do just that, providing a "snapshot" of Iraq during the first year of the United States military occupation. Parenti touches on the themes of the occupation that continue to this day--the criminalization of the Iraqi people, the colossal failure of the reconstruction effort, the ongoing resistance to occupation, the distorted information presented to (and reported in) the corporate media, and the hostility of US soldiers to the Iraqi people.

The corporate media has failed to accurately report on Iraq during the lead up to the invasion, during the invasion, and during the occupation. While there have occasionally been a few decent articles that have appeared in the corporate media, the majority of the articles have done a poor job explaining is happening in Iraq, with the media choosing to unquestioningly accept the assertions of the United States government. Ideally, there would have been independent journalists to fill this void, and while there have been a number of independent journalists who took extraordinary risks to create an accurate picture of what is going on Iraq, there have always been too few. Parenti was one of the few independent journalists who spent time in Iraq and The Freedom details his experiences in Iraq and uses them to create a vivid picture of the human aspects of the occupation.

Parenti reveals the realities of the occupation through his interactions with ordinary Iraqis, and in the process, reveals facets of the occupation that have gained little attention in the United States. The occupation has been characterized by the criminalization of much of the Iraqi population--over 40,000 people have been detained by the United States and many cities and villages have been put on "lockdown" with curfews, identification cards, and checkpoints, all of which are part of the "larger logic" of the US occupation--that of collective punishment of civilians as counterinsurgency." Parenti describes going to the Abu Ghraib prison to wait with people having family members held in the prison for months without charges, raids on houses, and abuse of detainees by US soldiers. The United States has attempted to justify this collective punishment as a necessary means of fighting the resistance. Parenti met with members of a resistance cell and his book features an account of a friend who met with the resistance in Falluja, and Parenti's reporting confirms the assertion that the resistance is not a movement but rather various parts without a clear or coherent ideology, a critique that has been made by other writers.

While the resistance and the criminalization of the Iraqi people is omnipresent in Iraq, Parenti focuses on other issues as well. He talks about the massive rise in crime in Iraq, crime that has come as a consequence of the 60% unemployment rate in Iraq. Prostitution has also become more common; while murders are so widespread that the director of the Baghdad morgue estimates that there are over six-hundred a month--a fact that caused the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to stop tabulating murders during its time administering the occupation. He discusses how the United States has awarded contracts to companies that have been convicted of corruption and that the sum pledged by the United States, $18.4 billion, is only a third of the $55 billion recommended by the World Bank. The United States incompetence managing reconstruction efforts and the inability of people to meet their basic needs, has led to the increase in crime and resistance attacks.

The Freedom gives readers a picture of the occupation that is far different from what is encountered in the corporate media. Parenti's book is a intriguing and useful and is one of the better-published discussions of the Iraq war and its consequence.