"Street Fight in Iraq" relates with great candor the unvarnished realities of dealing with day to day combat in and around Ramadi, Iraq. You will be shocked, fascinated, outraged and frustrated when you read about the fight for Democracy and Peace in Iraq. This book is about Marines who made the journey to combat and the unbelievable events that made up their seven month combat tour. The language is harsh, the writing brutally honest and the message clear. This is a definite must read for military and civilians alike.
They Fought for Each Other presents a searing chronicle of the soldiers of Battalion 1-26 who confronted the worst neighborhood in Baghdad and lost more men than any battalion since the Vietnam War. Based on "Blood Brothers," the award-nominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a safe and secure neighborhood. Army Times writer Kelly Kennedy was embedded with Charlie Company in 2007, went on patrol with the soldiers and spent hours in combat support hospitals, leading to this riveting chronicle of an Army battalion that lost 31 soldiers in Iraq. During that period, one soldier threw himself on a grenade to save his friends, a well-liked first sergeant shot himself to death in front of his troops, and a platoon staged a mutiny. The men of Charlie 1-26 would earn at least 95 combat awards, including one soldier who would go home with three Purple Hearts and a lost dream. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ four-year campaign against al Qaeda in Anbar is a fight certain to take its place next to such legendary clashes as Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Chosin, and Khe Sanh. Its success, the author contends, constituted a major turning point in the Iraq War and helped alter the course of events and set the stage for the Surge in Baghdad a year later. This book brings to light all the decisive details of how the Marines, between 2004 and 2008, adapted and improvised as they applied the hard lessons of past mistakes. In March 2004, when part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) was deployed to Anbar Province in the heart of the Sunni triangle, the Marines quickly found themselves locked in a bloody test of wills with al Qaeda, and a burgeoning violent insurgency. By the spring of 2006, according to all accounts, enemy violence was skyrocketing, while predictions for any U.S. success were plummeting. But at that same time new counterinsurgency initiatives were put in place when I MEF returned for its second tour in Anbar, and the Marines began to gain control. By September 2008 the fight was over. Richard Shultz, a well-known author and international security studies expert, has thoroughly researched this subject. His book effectively argues the case for the Marines changing the course of the war at Anbar, which is contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Surge was the turning point."
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book "Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.
Now available in paperback. Winner of the 2007 American Authors Association Golden Quill Award. Winner of the 2007 Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award.
This is a study of the Second Battle of Fallujah, also known as Operation Al-Fajr and Operation Phantom Fury. Over the course of November and December 2004, the I Marine Expeditionary Force conducted a grueling campaign to clear the city of Fallujah of insurgents and end its use as a base for the anticoalition insurgency in western Iraq. The battle involved units from the Marine Corps, Army, and Iraqi military and constituted one of the largest engagements of the Iraq War. The study is based on interviews conducted by Marine Corps History Division field historians of battle participants and archival material. The book will be of primary interest to Marines, other service members, policy makers, and the faculty and students at the service schools and academies. Historians, veterans, high school through univeristy history departments and students as well as libraries may be interested in this book as well. With full color maps and photographs.
