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Chargement... The CIA War in Kurdistan: The Untold Story of the Northern Front in the Iraq Warpar Sam Faddis
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"A valuable history [and] a stark warning to Washington policy and strategy makers." --James Stejskal, former US Army Special Forces and CIA officer In 2002, Sam Faddis was named to head a CIA team that would enter Iraq to facilitate the deployment of follow-on conventional military forces numbering over 40,000 American soldiers. This force, built around the 4th Infantry Division, would, in partnership with Kurdish forces and with the assistance of Turkey, engage Saddam's army in the North as part of a coming invasion. Faddis expected to be on the ground in Iraq within weeks, the entire campaign likely to be over by summer. Over the course of the next year, virtually every aspect of that plan for the conduct of the war in northern Iraq fell apart. The 4th Infantry Division never arrived, nor did any other conventional forces in substantial number. The Turks not only refused to provide support, they worked overtime to prevent the United States from achieving success. And an Arab army that was to assist US forces fell apart before it ever made it to the field. Alone, hopelessly outnumbered, short on supplies, and threatened by Iraqi assassination teams and Islamic extremists, Faddis's team, working with Kurdish peshmerga, miraculously paved the way for a brilliant and largely bloodless victory in the North and the fall of Saddam's Iraq. That victory, handed over to Washington and the Department of Defense on a silver platter, was then squandered. The decisions that followed would lead to catastrophic consequences that continue to this day. This is the story of the brave and effective team of men and women who overcame massive odds to help end the nightmare of Saddam's rule. It is also the story of how incompetence, bureaucracy, and ignorance threw that success away and condemned Iraq and the surrounding region to chaos Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)956.70443History and Geography Asia Middle East IraqClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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This book answers a few big questions: why was the initial invasion of Iraq so understaffed, especially in the North (answer: DOD kept wishing Turkey would act against its own long-term interests and repeatedly revealed preferences and support the Kurds, and somehow policymakers never accepted reality and prepared an alternative plan); what was the deal with WMD (CIA on the ground was providing accurate and inconclusive information about WMD, and never found any solid evidence; the internal USG reasons for invading Iraq were not about immediate WMD threat, but WMD threat was used to sell the invasion to the public for political reasons, which had the disadvantage of being a lie); why didn't the Kurds get to do more in the initial war anyway (DOD-CIA rivalry and a political desire to not have the Kurds appear to be invading Arab cities, even when the alternatives were worse); why was the post-invasion so bad (people like Paul Bremer at CPA, genuine incompetence and bureaucracy in Washington, and unwillingness to face reality.)
As you'd expect by a CIA officer, it's well structured, and provides a lot of interesting details of daily life in Kurdistan before the war started. The most comparable book to this is First In by Gary Schroen, who did basically the same thing in Afghanistan with much more success (due to a more supportive US Government and less meddling). ( )