Chad Cole, a young US Marine Rifleman experiences the strains of the Marine Corps in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. In a raw and looping narrative, Chad teaches the reader the importance of hearing and telling war stories from Vietnam and Desert Storm and also offers up his own experience with Lima Company 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines during Operation Peacemaker, the military response to the 1992 Rodney King Riot, in Los Angeles, California. By 1995 the young Sergeant leads a squad from 2nd Platoon, Lima Company 3/1, during Operation United Shield, the final United Nations withdrawal from "the dirty little war," of Mogadishu, Somalia. The author was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for Valor and the Combat Action Ribbon for his actions during United Shield.

Unlike any conflict before or since, World War II was a truly worldwide war, with dozens of nations participating in significant battles in virtually every corner of the globe. In this definitive guide, military analyst James F. Dunnigan chooses fifty titles out of the many thousands of books published on the subject as being the most worthy of a place in your library. He includes incisive commentary on such important volumes as General George S. Patton Jr.'s classic tome War As I Knew It -- a personal and brutally honest narrative of the famed leader's march across Western Europe -- and Studs Terkel's acclaimed oral history A Good War, with its riveting day-to-day accounts of the fighting men of many nations.

From 1837 to 1901, in Asia, China, Canada, Africa, and elsewhere, military expedition were constantly being undertaken to protect resident Britons or British interests, to extend a frontier, to repel an attack, avenge an insult, or suppress a mutiny or rebellion. Continuous warfare became an accepted way of life in the Victorian era, and in the process the size of the British Empire quadrupled.But engrossing as these small wars are--and they bristle with bizarre, tragic, and often humorous incident--it is the officers and men who fought them that dominate this book. With their courage, foolhardiness, and eccentricities, they are an unforgettable lot.

A New York Times bestseller Now also an Oscar-nominated documentary In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater, takes us inside America's new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies. Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA's Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through "black budgets," Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy. Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that "the world is a battlefield," as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government. As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk -- we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as "suspected militants." Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.

"Clean Bombs and Dirty Wars: Air Power in Kosovo and Libya explores how the U.S. public, policymakers, and military services perceived and utilized air power and precision munitions before, during, and after Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999 with incorrect assumptions"--

A collection of nearly nine hundred items covering various aspects of war making around the world exposing just how the military does--and does not--work.

This book examines the long, complex experience of American involvement in irregular warfare. It begins with the American Revolution in 1776 and chronicles big and small irregular wars for the next two and a half centuries. What is readily apparent in dirty wars is that failure is painfully tangible while success is often amorphous. Successfully fighting these wars often entails striking a critical balance between military victory and politics. America's status as a democracy only serves to make fighting - and, to a greater degree, winning - these irregular wars even harder. Rather than futilely insisting that Americans should not or cannot fight this kind of irregular war, Russell Crandall argues that we would be better served by considering how we can do so as cleanly and effectively as possible.

Dirty War is the first comprehensive look at the Rhodesia’s top secret use of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) during their long counterinsurgency against native African nationalists. Having declared its independence from Great Britain in 1965, the government—made up of European settlers and their descendants—almost immediately faced a growing threat from native African nationalists. In the midst of this long and terrible conflict, Rhodesia resorted to chemical and biological weapons against an elusive guerrilla adversary. A small team made up of a few scientists and their students at a remote Rhodesian fort to produce lethal agents for use. Cloaked in the strictest secrecy, these efforts were overseen by a battle-hardened and ruthless officer of Rhodesia’s Special Branch and his select team of policemen. Answerable only to the head of Rhodesian intelligence and the Prime Minister, these men working alongside Rhodesia’s elite counterguerrilla military unit, the Selous Scouts, developed the ingenious means to deploy their poisons against the insurgents. The effect of the poisons and disease agents devastated the insurgent groups both inside Rhodesia and at their base camps in neighboring countries. At times in the conflict, the Rhodesians thought that their poisons effort would bring the decisive blow against the guerrillas. For months at a time, the Rhodesian use of CBW accounted for higher casualty rates than conventional weapons. In the end, however, neither CBW use nor conventional battlefield successes could turn the tide. Lacking international political or economic support, Rhodesia’s fate from the outset was doomed. Eventually the conflict was settled by the ballot box and Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe in April 1980. Dirty War is the culmination of nearly two decades of painstaking research and interviews of dozens of former Rhodesian officers who either participated or were knowledgeable about the top secret development and use of CBW. The book also draws on the handful of remaining classified Rhodesian documents that tell the story of the CBW program. Dirty War combines all of the available evidence to provide a compelling account of how a small group of men prepared and used CBW to devastating effect against a largely unprepared and unwitting enemy. Looking at the use of CBW in the context of the Rhodesian conflict, Dirty War provides unique insights into the motivation behind CBW development and use by states, especially by states combating internal insurgencies. As the norms against CBW use have seemingly eroded with CW use evident in Iraq and most recently in Syria, the lessons of the Rhodesian experience are all the more valid and timely.

The Chechen War was supposed to be over in 1996 after the first Yeltsin campaign, but in the summer of 1999, the new Putin government decided, in their own words, to 'do the job properly'. Before all the bodies of those who had died in the first campaign had been located or identified, many more thousands would be slaughtered in another round of fighting. The first account to be written by a Russian woman, A Dirty War is an edgy and intense study of a conflict that shows no sign of being resolved. Exasperated by the Russian government's attempt to manipulate media coverage of the war, journalist Anna Politkovskaya undertook to go to Chechnya, to make regular reports and keep events in the public eye. In a series of despatches from July 1999 to January 2001 she vividly describes the atrocities and abuses of war, whether it be the corruption endemic in post-Communist Russia, in particular the government and the military, or the spurious arguments and abominable behaviour of the Chechen authorities. In these courageous reports, Politkovskaya excoriates male stupidity and brutality on both sides of the conflict and interviews the civilians whose homes and communities have been laid waste, leaving them nowhere to live, and nothing and no one to believe in.

Outlines current conflicts in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, examining each conflict's history, geography, military capabilities, politics, economics, and ethnic factors. Discusses regional and worldwide trends and shows how wars will unfold in the next five to ten yeas. This third edition is updated from the 1991 edition, and explores issues surrounding German unification, and the postwar state of the Persian Gulf. Includes bandw maps and tables. For students, journalists, and general readers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR