Battle CENTCOM

For the US Army to succeed in the 21st Century, Soldiers of all ranks must understand and use Mission Command. Mission Command empowers leaders at all levels, allowing them to synchronize all warfighting functions and information systems to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative against a range of adversaries. This collection of historical vignettes seeks to sharpen our understanding of Mission Command philosophy and practice by providing examples from the past in which Mission Command principles played a decisive role. Some vignettes show junior officers following their commander's intent and exercising disciplined initiative in very chaotic combat operations. Others recount how field grade officers built cohesive teams that relied on mutual trust to achieve key operational objectives. Each historical account is complemented by an annotated explanation of how the six Mission Command principles shaped the action. For this reason, the collection is ideal for leader development in the Army school system as well as for unit and individual professional development.

Informed by access to still-secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military's own internal after-action reports, this is the definitive chronicle of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq--a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on classified United States government intelligence, it traces the interactions among the generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush; provides an account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted their war strategy; reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought them; and documents with precision the failures of American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.

Written by the chief military correspondent of the New York Times and a prominent retired Marine general, this is the definitive account of the invasion of Iraq. A stunning work of investigative journalism, Cobra II describes in riveting detail how the American rush to Baghdad provided the opportunity for the virulent insurgency that followed. As Gordon and Trainor show, the brutal aftermath was not inevitable and was a surprise to the generals on both sides. Based on access to unseen documents and exclusive interviews with the men and women at the heart of the war, Cobra II provides firsthand accounts of the fighting on the ground and the high-level planning behind the scenes. Now with a new afterword that addresses what transpired after the fateful events of the summer of 2003, this is a peerless re-creation and analysis of the central event of our times.

A fast-paced narrative history of the coups, revolutions, and invasions by which the United States has toppled fourteen foreign governments - not always to its own benefit "Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though perhaps notthe last, example of the dangers inherent in these operations. In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer tells the stories of the audacious politicians, spies, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers. He also shows that the U.S. government has often pursued these operations without understanding the countries involved; as a result, many of them have had disastrous long-term consequences. In a compelling and provocative history that takes readers to fourteen countries, including Cuba, Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, and Iraq, Kinzer surveys modern American history from a new and often surprising perspective.

Over time the impression has grown that the 2003 invasion of Iraq met with little resistance and that, with few exceptions, the Iraqi army simply melted away. As this book clearly shows, nothing could be further from the truth. In its drive to capture Baghdad, the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division was in nearly constant combat for twenty-one days. While Americans were watching Saddam's statue being torn down on TV, a brigade of the 3rd ID was on the verge of being overrun by Iraqi Republican Guard units trying to escape north. Told to hold two bridges in his sector, a brigade commander had to blow up one of them because he did not have the combat power to hold it. The company commander holding the other bridge was so hard pressed that he called on the artillery to fire their final protective fires a command made only when a unit is in mortal danger and one that had not been given since Vietnam. Every one of the division's armored vehicles was hit by rockets some taking more than a dozen hits and the fighting was so fierce at times that entire battalions ran out of ammunition. Nevertheless, when the fighting was finally over, the 3rd ID had destroyed two Iraqi Regular Army divisions and three divisions of the much vaunted Republican Guard. Takedown tells the little-known story of what happened to the 3rd ID during its struggle to win Baghdad, a campaign that some call one of the most vicious in American military history. To offer this firsthand account, Jim Lacey, a former Time magazine reporter embedded with the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, draws on extensive interviews that he conducted with the American soldiers involved as well as access to personal papers and war memoirs. This story is also enriched through his extensive use of interview transcripts of senior Iraqi army officers along with their personal written recollections. From the Kuwaiti border to the streets of Baghdad, these dramatic eyewitness descriptions of what went on give readers an accurate look at the brutal engagements in which the division fought for its life. In making use of such a wealth of primary source material, Lacey has succeeded in writing a fast paced narrative of the conflict, backed up by verifiable facts, that shows how modern wars are really fought.

The authoritative account of America’s most controversial war since Vietnam, a conflict in which “shock and awe” were not confined to the battlefield It was a war like no other the United States had ever fought. It began with the bombing of Saddam Hussein’s bunker and ended with statues of the Iraqi dictator being toppled in downtown Baghdad, and it marked a turning point in America’s relations with its enemies, its allies, and its sense of itself. Yet most Americans experienced the war as impressionistic and often confusing—the story of one battle here, one unit there, a report from one city, then another, without the larger context we so urgently needed. Each reporter had his “slice” of the war, it seemed, but no one had the whole story or the broad view. A Time of Our Choosing fills that gap brilliantly, drawing on the unparalleled resources and reportage of The New York Times. Todd S. Purdum, one of the paper’s most gifted storytellers, traces the war in Iraq from the first rumblings after 9/11, to the diplomatic recriminations at the United Nations, to the battles themselves and their aftermath. He deftly rolls out the whole canvas before our eyes, showing how the individual “slices” fit together into a single, gripping drama. Purdum also explores the complex legacy of America’s near-unilateral action. Since the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush has vowed that the United States would confront its enemies “at a time of our choosing,” and Purdum shows in vivid terms what this choice has meant for our now transformed world.