War In Iraq

In this unprecedented account of the intensive air and ground operations in Iraq, two of America's most distinguished military historians bring clarity and depth to the first major war of the new millennium. Reaching beyond the blaring headlines, embedded videophone reports, and daily Centcom briefings, Williamson Murray and Robert Scales analyze events in light of past military experiences, present battleground realities, and future expectations. The Iraq War puts the recent conflict into context. Drawing on their extensive military expertise, the authors assess the opposing aims of the Coalition forces and the Iraqi regime and explain the day-to-day tactical and logistical decisions of infantry and air command, as British and American troops moved into Basra and Baghdad. They simultaneously step back to examine long-running debates within the U.S. Defense Department about the proper uses of military power and probe the strategic implications of those debates for America's buildup to this war. Surveying the immense changes that have occurred in America's armed forces between the Gulf conflicts of 1991 and 2003--changes in doctrine as well as weapons--this volume reveals critical meanings and lessons about the new "American way of war" as it has unfolded in Iraq.

One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 “The detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq is essential reading—now, especially now . . . Draper’s account [is] one for the ages . . . A must-read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post From the author of the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain comes the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy--the decision to invade Iraq. Even now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. For too many people, the damage is still too palpable, and still unfolding. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few of them are not haunted by it, in one way or another. Perhaps it's that combination, the passage of the years and the still unresolved trauma, that explains why so many protagonists opened up so fully for the first time to Robert Draper. Draper's prodigious reporting has yielded scores of consequential new revelations, from the important to the merely absurd. As a whole, the book paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. Draper's fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective process that arrived at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth--evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.

From 1980 to 1988 Iran and Iraq fought the longest conventional war of the century. It included tragic slaughter of child soldiers, use of chemical weapons, striking of civilian shipping, and destruction of cities. Pierre Razoux offers an unflinching look at a conflict seared into the region’s collective memory but little understood in the West.

National bestseller: the ultimate insider account about what really is going on in Iraq. It's the most controversial conflict of our time: a war which has divided citizens, politicians, and militaries, resulted in headlines about torture and suicide bombings, death and destruction. there's no single identifiable enemy and no exit strategy. So how will the war in Iraq be won? What would victory look like?When Australian Major General Jim Molan was deployed to the war to oversee a force of 300,000 troops, including 155,000 Americans, he faced these and other questions on a daily basis. In Running the War in Iraq he gives a gripping insider's account of what modern warfare entails - the ghastly body count, the complex decisions which will mean life or death, the divide between political masters and foot soldiers - and the small, hard-won triumphs.

A complete explanation of the U.S. decision to go to war in 2003.

The almost universally accepted explanation for the Iraq War is very clear and consistent - the US decision to attack Saddam Hussein's regime on March 19, 2003 was a product of the ideological agenda, misguided priorities, intentional deceptions and grand strategies of President George W. Bush and prominent 'neoconservatives' and 'unilateralists' on his national security team. Despite the widespread appeal of this version of history, Frank P. Harvey argues that it remains an unsubstantiated assertion and an underdeveloped argument without a logical foundation. His book aims to provide a historically grounded account of the events and strategies which pushed the US-UK coalition towards war. The analysis is based on both factual and counterfactual evidence, combines causal mechanisms derived from multiple levels of analysis and ultimately confirms the role of path dependence and momentum as a much stronger explanation for the sequence of decisions that led to war.

Examining the United States' hidden role in the collapse of the U.N. weapons inspection agency, UNSCOM, this book demonstrates that a war with Iraq would be in violation of international law and could precipitate a world recession with dire consequences for the world's poor.

"In this analysis, commentator Michael Schwartz demolishes the myths used to sell the U.S. public on the idea of an endless "war on terror" centered in Iraq. He shows how the U.S. occupation is fueling civil war in Iraq and beyond and how U.S. officials dismantled the Iraqi state and economy, helping to destroy rather than rebuild the country."--BOOK JACKET.