Iraq History

This is the bizarre tale of 12 young American soldiers who are deployed to Iraq in the summer of 2006. Rather than fight the enemy in combat, the men are unexpectedly assigned to guard the country's notorious leader - Saddam Hussein - in the months leading to his execution. Living alongside and caring for their "high-value detainee" in a former palace dubbed The Rock and regularly transporting him to his raucous trial, many of the men begin questioning some of their most basic assumptions.

Dillard Johnson was at the forefront of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But surviving the enemy was only the beginning. Johnson would use the intensity, focus, and humor that kept him alive on the battlefield to fight stage three Hodgkin's Lymphoma. A man determined not to die, Johnson made a miraculous recovery - and then returned to Iraq for a second combat tour as an Army sniper. Funny and exciting, Carnivore offers fresh insight into the mind and heart of a warrior and offers a look at the lives of troops on the ground not seen before.

Across Cultures and Empires is above all an immigrant's story. Mahir Ibrahimov's fluency in multiple languages offers the perspective of someone who found a way to successfully cross boundaries amid the fall of empire and the resulting cascade of conflicts, even as he provides the listener with insight into an era where mass migration has become a defining dynamic. In the course of telling his personal story and reflecting upon his experiences, Ibrahimov offers clear observations on the deep connections he has made about freedom and America's role in the world.

In Level Zero Heroes, Michael Golembesky follows the members of U.S. Marine Special Operations Team 8222 on their assignment to the remote and isolated Taliban stronghold known as Bala Murghab as they conduct special operations in an effort to break the Taliban's grip on the Valley. What started out as a routine mission changed when two 82nd Airborne Paratroopers tragically drowned in the Bala Murghab River while trying to retrieve vital supplies from an air drop that had gone terribly wrong.

Everybody makes mistakes, but when an American president blunders, the results can be catastrophic. In an effort to put an end to Britain and France's policy of seizing American ships and sailors, Thomas Jefferson calls for an embargo. The result: 30,000 sailors put out of work; mercantile families bankrupted overnight; a nationwide economic depression; and the New England states, which depended heavily on international commerce, threaten to secede from the Union.All of these, and many more, incredible lapses in judgement are explained in this book.

In recent years, Pakistan has changed from being a state of regional strategic significance to one of major global importance. Its geographical position and delicate religious mix, coupled with a complex political structure and its status as a nuclear power, have ensured that its actions - and inactions - have attracted close scrutiny since 9/11 and the declaration of the "War on Terror". Yet there remains widespread disagreement among political and military analysts as to the real position of this enigmatic nation.

The Assassins' Gate, so dubbed by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point?

In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qa'ida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training US military members to resist interrogation should they be captured, Mitchell, aware of the urgent need to prevent impending catastrophic attacks, worked with the CIA to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques" - which included waterboarding.

Only once in a lifetime does a war so brutal erupt. A war that becomes an official genocide, causes millions to run from their homes, compels the slaughtering of thousands in the most horrific of ways, and inspires terrorist attacks to transpire across the world. That is the chilling legacy of the ISIS onslaught, and Only Cry for the Living takes a profoundly personal, unprecedented dive into one of the most brutal terrorist organizations in the world.

The massacre of the Yazidi people by ISIS was nothing less than genocide. In refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, the authors brought a skilled team to interview more than a hundred ISIS survivors and document what they experienced and saw. These former slaves observed their torturers and knew from the inside the secret facilities that ISIS has kept hidden from the world. What their testimony reveals is an organization whose ambition is power, regardless of their claim to be "soldiers of God."

Determined to offer an unfiltered version of events, the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid was neither embedded with soldiers nor briefed by politicians. Because he is fluent in Arabic, Shadid, an Arab-American born and raised in Oklahoma, was able to actually disappear into the divided, dangerous worlds of Iraq. Day by day, as American dreams clashed with Arab notions of justice, he pieced together the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the terrible dislocations and tragedies of war.

Singer provides the first account of the military services industry and its broader implications. Corporate Warriors includes a description of how the business works, as well as portraits of each of the basic types of companies: military providers that offer troops for tactical operations; military consultants that supply expert advice and training; and military support companies that sell logistics, intelligence, and engineering.

Even now, after more than 15 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.

The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion.

By official accounts, the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon returned as heroes after their 2017 deployment to Mosul, following a vicious, bloody, and successful campaign to drive ISIS from the city. But within the platoon a different war raged. Even as Alpha’s chief, Eddie Gallagher, was being honored by the Navy for his leadership, several of his men were preparing to report him for war crimes, alleging that he’d stabbed a prisoner in cold blood and taken lethal sniper shots at unarmed civilians.

This fast-paced, behind-the-scenes narrative tells the inside story of how the Bush administration used bad intelligence to sell and then justify the Iraq war. Veteran reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn take the reader behind the scenes at the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress, where controversial decisions and turf battles were fought in the highest circles of the Bush administration.

The American invasion of Iraq has been a success - for the Kurds. Kurdistan is an invisible nation, and the Kurds the largest ethnic group on Earth without a homeland, comprising some 25 million moderate Sunni Muslims living in the area around the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Through a history dating back to biblical times, they have endured persecution and betrayal, surviving only through stubborn compromise with greater powers. They have always desired their own state, and now, accidentally, the United States may have helped them take a huge step toward that goal.

In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. It was a journey of sharp, often brutal contrasts. At one moment he would be exploring the old streets of Baghdad or the ancient ruins of Babylon. At the next he would be visiting the war-torn city of Mosul, or learning about the horrific Speicher massacre in Tikrit.

The army does not want you to listen to this book. It does not want to advertise its detention system that coddles enemy fighters while putting American soldiers at risk. It does not want to reveal the new lawyered-up Pentagon war ethic that prosecutes US soldiers and marines while setting free spies who kill Americans. This very system ambushed Captain Roger Hill and his men.

Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every level (senior policymakers, negotiators, generals, and soldiers and Marines on the front lines) No True Glory is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complex, and often costly, interconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty-first century.