Hunting Down Saddam
The Inside Story of the Search and Capture
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This authoritative and gripping narrative plunges the American public into the real and personal story of the United States forces in Iraq, and their successful maneuvers in capturing one of the most vicious dictators of our time.
Hunting Down Saddam contains up-to-the-minute material and provides never-before-heard accounts of the triumphs and frustrations, strategies and attacks, of those who put their lives at risk to track down Saddam Hussein.
* The first book to tell the whole story of the pursuit of Saddam, from pre-war to his capture.
* Candid accounts straight from the soldiers on the frontline, which have not been sanitized or filtered through the media, the military, or the Pentagon.
* Exclusive interviews with key military leaders, including Colonel "Smokin' Joe" Anderson, Commanding Officer of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles), who led the attack on Saddam's sons.
The capture of Saddam Hussein is the defining event for this generation's military. Action-packed and controversial, Hunting Down Saddam teems with inside information. Robin Moore gets the real story from these fighting men as only he can.
Doris Kearns Goodwin calls Hunting Down Saddam, "A fast and furious read . . . when the historians try to put together the real facts of the two wars the U. S. has fought since September 11, 2001 this book will be a valuable contribution to their research."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The doughty author of The Green Berets and the instant-seeming The Hunt for Bin Laden gives us this jumbled but valuable set of accounts of crucial operations in the Iraq war. The focus is on Special Forces, to which the author remains loyal, given his background with them going back to the Vietnam War. Moore, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, went to Iraq last year, at the age of 78, and followed Task Force VIKING's (the military uses all caps when referring to such objective-oriented groups) work with the highly factionalized Kurdish armed forces, as well as Task Force DAGGER's infiltration of southern Iraq, neither much covered in the general media. Also unique to this book is the narrative of a 4th Infantry battalion's operations in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown and a center of continued Iraqi resistance, where American troops and their Iraqi allies accomplished a good deal of nation building, or at least peacekeeping, while taking casualties. The grand finale is, of course, Saddam's capture in a "spiderhole" outside Tikrit, where the story had to end in order to meet the publication deadline. This may have led to the slightly rushed feel of the prose, but the pro-military tone is expected from the author and his assistants and informants, most retired or serving military. Also rushed, but vivid, are portraits of those Americans who are still at the "sharp end" in Iraq, who deserve knowledgeable portrayals of and full credit for their dangerous work, which they receive here. This book adds to our knowledge of how Spec Ops have been integrated with regular units (with a high degree of success) in the last generation, and it will appeal to Moore's established audience and to serious students of Special Operations, along with most people interested in the Iraq war. The pressing topic should carry many readers over the book's awkward prose and fragmented structure.
