Iraq History

Peu de gens connaissent vraiment le rôle de l'Irak dans la Première Guerre mondiale. Ce mémoire explore la vie et le devoir de Frank Wooten, un Américain, servant comme officier britannique dans le Corps mésopotamien des mitrailleuses à moteur. Racontant la vie quotidienne de Frank sur le front, ses fonctions tout au long de la guerre et les personnes incroyables qu'il a rencontrées en cours de route, Voyage dans l'Eden est un livre parfait pour quiconque s'intéresse aux histoires moins connues de la Première Guerre mondiale.

In his gripping narrative, we meet General Tommy Franks, who bridles at CIA control of "his" war; General "Jafar Amin", a gruff Pakistani intelligence officer who saves Grenier from committing career suicide; Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's brilliant ambassador to the US, who tries to warn her government of the al-Qaeda threat; "Mark", the CIA operator who guides GulAgha Shirzai to bloody victory over the Taliban.

Based on previously unavailable documents and interviews with more than 100 key players, including General David Petraeus, The Insurgents unfolds against the backdrop of two wars waged against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main insurgency is the one led at home by a new generation of officers - including Petraeus, John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and H. R. McMaster - who were seized with an idea on how to fight these kinds of "small wars" and who adapted their enemies' techniques to overhaul their own army.

When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war. What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority was not to vanquish Al Qaeda, but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention.

Not everyone has pulled shards of another man's skull from the palm of their hand. Not everyone has stood over the bodies of friends whose lives were lost in an instant. Not everyone has struggled to face their own reflection for years on end. But anyone who has experienced trauma or adversity will resonate with Legion Rising, the unflinchingly honest account of an army officer's journey through combat in the Iraq War and rising beyond the scars that trauma leaves behind.

James Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis' last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year, nor that it would become, in the words of the Pentagon, "the most significant urban combat since WWII." They Will Have to Die Now takes the listener into the heart of the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time. We see unspeakable violence, improbable humanity, and occasional humor.

In 2007, US Army Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. was charged with murder by the government he had sworn to serve. While deployed to the most dangerous area in Iraq, Sandoval, an airborne infantryman and elite sniper, was instructed to "take the shot" and kill an enemy insurgent wearing civilian clothes. Two weeks later, Army Criminal Investigation Command descended upon Sandoval's unit and began interrogating the soldiers, trying to link Sandoval and others to war crimes, including murder. Captain Craig W. Drummond was the JAG military defense attorney assigned to Sandoval's case.

The General’s dysfunctional home life drove him to apply to the Air Force Academy almost 40 years ago, where he was provided with a new family and sense of worth he had never gotten from his own father. This purpose has driven the General throughout his remarkable career, taking him to Alaska, the Pentagon, and Germany; to Florida during Hurricane Opal, and has also allowed him to work alongside Presidents Bush and Obama and Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Ashton Carter. Journey is a book about leadership. It is packed with the General’s lessons from life in the military.

In the second volume of Harrier Boys, as with the first, the history of this remarkable aircraft in service with UK armed forces is illustrated through personal reminiscences of the people who worked with it. The book begins with explanations of the mature concept of operations with the Harrier GR3 in the Cold War. It then progresses through the evolution of Harrier II, starting with the GR5, and updates to the Sea Harrier, while the potential battles to be fought necessitated ever-changing tactics and technology.

Ryan A. Conklin enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17, following 9/11, and joined Angel Company. As a turret gunner with the famed 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" and a member of the famed "Rakkasans" regiment - the most decorated regiment in the U.S. Army - he endured hellish conditions in the war-torn city of Tikrit, Iraq.

On the eve of September 11, 2001, New York City's famous National Guard regiment, the fighting 69th Infantry, was not fit for duty. Most of its soldiers were immigrant kids with no prior military experience, and their equipment was derelict. The thought of deploying such a unit was laughable. Sean Flynn, himself a member of the 69th, memorably chronicles the transformation of this motley band of amateur soldiers into a battle-hardened troop at work in one of the most lethal quarters of Baghdad.

When Donovan Campbell's platoon deployed to Ramadi in the spring of 2004, they believed they'd be spending most of their time building schools, training police, and making friends with the citizens. But shortly after arriving, when Campbell awoke to the chilling cry of "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad!" echoing from minaret to minaret across the city, he knew they had an altogether different situation on their hands.

Lost for 13 months in the wilds of Afghanistan, this is the dramatic, heart-warming and truly amazing story of Sarbi, the Army's most famous explosives detection dog - the miracle dog of Tarin Kot. Powerful, dramatic, heartwarming, this is the true story of Sarbi, the scruffy black Labrador-cross trained by the Australian Army as an explosives detection dog for the most dangerous combat mission imaginable. Thirteen months after Australia's most famous canine warrior went missing in action in 2008, she was found by an American Special Forces officer patrolling a village....

From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington. When John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end.

On 13 July 2008, nine American Soldiers perished while fighting a pitched battle in the village of Wanat in Afghanistan's Waygal Valley. On that day the men of Company C, 2d Battalion, 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment, endured four hours of intense close-quarters combat and mounting casualties. The contingent of 49 United States and 24 Afghan National Army Soldiers valiantly defended their small outpost against a coordinated attack by a determined insurgent force armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

A captain in 29 Commando, Johnny Mercer served in the army for 12 years. On his third tour of Afghanistan, he was a joint fires controller, with the pressurized job of bringing down artillery and air strikes in close proximity to his own troops. Based in an area of Northern Helmand that was riddled with Taliban leaders, he walked into danger with every patrol, determined to protect them. Then, one morning, in brutal close-quarter combat, everything changed....

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it "the surge". "Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences," he told a skeptical nation. Among those listening were the young, optimistic Army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers.

They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. They survived the military's brutal winnowing to reach its top echelon. They became the Army's most influential generals in the crucible of Iraq. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the Army over the last four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protect the nation over the next century.

In November 2006, then-first-lieutenant Thomas Daly arrived as part of the surge in Ramadi to take part in Operation Squeeze Play, a division-size effort to remove al-Qaeda from Anbar province. In this powerful memoir, he describes the successful clearing of Southern Ramadi's Second Officer's district, the Qatana, and the uprising of local citizens against al-Qaeda on the eastern edge of the city (the result of an unlikely alliance between Daly's company and Thawar al Anbar).

They marched under the heat with 40-pound rucksacks on their backs. They fired weapons out of the windows of military vehicles, defending their units in deadly battles. And they did things their male counterparts could never do—gather intelligence on the Taliban from the women of Afghanistan. Beyond the Call follows the groundbreaking journeys of three women as they first fight military brass and culture and then enemy fire and tradition. And like the men with whom they served, their battles were not over when they returned home.