Summary

Chapter 10 opens in 2007 with Rita, who has returned to the United States and started work as a senior analyst for the Foreign Affairs Foundation. Rita is getting ready for an appearance on television and finds herself debating a former classmate from Harvard who works for Barack Obama. Rita sides with General David Petraeus, who says a swift pullout from Iraq would be dangerous. Amos Osgood, Rita’s classmate from Harvard, argues all troops should be pulled out by 2010, a major promise of Obama’s presidential campaign. Rita repeats the message from the email that got her fired from the newspaper: the United States made the mess in Iraq.

After the television interview, Rita texts her boyfriend, Jonah, a Jewish lawyer who works for the ACLU in Washington D.C., where Rita has relocated. They met at a mutual friend’s apartment at a party...