Thugs of Mosul
Thugs of Mosul

Author: Demetrios James Nicholson

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06-24

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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In January 2007, President Bush announced a surge of U.S. forces to Iraq to quell the ongoing insurgency and provide security for the Iraqi people. By June 2007, the aeroscouts of the 4-6 Air Cavalry Squadron deployed for their 15-month rotation in northern Iraq headquartered in Mosul. The Squadron executed combat operations across an area the size of New Jersey with the main effort focused on the violent insurgency in Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. It was one air cavalry troop's mission to secure the ground forces in Mosul; statistically the most violent city in Iraq and a location the insurgency called "the Final Battle."This is a combat story of A Troop "Thugs", 4-6 Air Cavalry Squadron and the courage, leadership, and bonds that join soldiers together. The Thug Scout Weapons Teams fought fiercely for 15 months and relentlessly pursued the insurgents in Mosul. As the success of the surge in Mosul grew, the Squadron joined the Thugs with aeroscouts from Blackdeath Troop and AH-64 Attack Weapons Teams "Wolfpack" to support the U.S. and Iraqi Army forces in finishing the enemy. Over 15 months the aircrews hunted IED emplacers and provided deadly fire support to troops in contact. The Thug's and Squadron's valorous combat actions added volumes to the history of the Air Cavalry.

Rendezvous in Baghdad
Rendezvous in Baghdad

Author: Ben Sheldon

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2012-09

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 147593677X

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As throngs of humanity pack Rome's St. Peter's Square, all await the news from the Sistine Chapel as to who will be the next Pope. But no one is more anxious than Iraqi American Sami Yusuf, for he and one of the papal candidates share a well-kept secret. When it is finally announced that Cardinal Paul Rogan has been elected Pope, Sami knows the one thing about Father Rogan that no one in the crowd does-he is a humble shepherd who molests his unsuspecting sheep. Many years earlier, while Sami was a Jesuit school student in Baghdad, he was molested by Father Rogan. Deathly afraid of revealing the abuse for fear of losing his family's honor, Sami eventually emigrated to the United States and joined the Air Force. Meanwhile, Father Rogan slowly moved up in the Catholic Hierarchy-while quietly ruining one young boy's life after another. Now amid sectarian mayhem and the occupation of Iraq, Sami must visit his ailing dad in Baghdad. But first he must fulfill his most important life's mission-to cleanse the honor that Father Rogan stripped from his family. In this compelling tale that spans three continents, a vendetta drives an Iraqi American pilot into international dram that culminates with unexpected ramifications that change everything forever.

The Cost of Loyalty
The Cost of Loyalty

Author: Tim Bakken

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1632868997

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A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020 A courageous and damning look at the destruction wrought by the arrogance, incompetence, and duplicity prevalent in the U.S. military-from the inside perspective of a West Point professor of law. Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America's collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military's insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. The consequences are undeniably grim: failure in every war since World War II, millions of lives lost around the globe, and trillions of dollars wasted. Bakken makes the case that the culture he has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them. Despite fabricated admissions data, rampant cheating, epidemics of sexual assault, archaic curriculums, and shoddy teaching, the military academies produce officers who maintain their privileges at any cost to the nation. Any dissenter is crushed. Bakken revisits all the major wars the United States has fought, from Korea to the current debacles in the Middle East, to show how the military culture produces one failure after another. The Cost of Loyalty is a powerful, multifaceted revelation about the United States and its singular source of pride. One of the few federal employees ever to win a whistleblowing case against the U.S. military, Bakken, in this brave, timely, and urgently necessary book, and at great personal risk, helps us understand why America loses wars.

Alpha
Alpha

Author: David Philipps

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0593238400

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An “infuriating, fast-paced” (The Washington Post) account of the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon, the startling accusations against their chief, Eddie Gallagher, and the courtroom battle that exposed the dark underbelly of America’s special forces—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter WINNER OF THE COLORADO BOOK AWARD • “Nearly impossible to put down.”—Jon Krakauer, New York Times bestselling author of Where Men Win Glory and Into the Wild In this “brilliantly written” (The New York Times Book Review) and startling account, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times correspondent David Philipps reveals a powerful moral crucible, one that would define the American military during the years of combat that became known as “the forever war.” When the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon returned from their 2017 deployment to Iraq, a group of them reported their chief, Eddie Gallagher, for war crimes, alleging that he’d stabbed a prisoner in cold blood and taken lethal sniper shots at unarmed civilians. The story of Alpha’s war, both in Iraq and in the shocking trial that followed the men’s accusations, would complicate the SEALs’ post-9/11 hero narrative, turning brothers-in-arms against one another and bringing into stark relief the choice that elite soldiers face between loyalty to their unit and to their country. One of the great stories written about American special forces, Alpha is by turns a battlefield drama, a courtroom thriller, and a compelling examination of how soldiers define themselves and live with the decisions in the heat of combat.

Road Warriors
Road Warriors

Author: Daniel Byman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-05-02

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0190646535

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Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.

We Meant Well
We Meant Well

Author: Peter Van Buren

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2011-09-27

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1429995238

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"One diplomat's darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and State Department have done—or tried to do—since the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all."—The New York Times A work of "scathing, gallows humor" (The Boston Globe), We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer—and readers—appalled and disillusioned, but wiser. Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets that lack water and electricity? As Peter Van Buren shows, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge—that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world's largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can't rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.