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.

The popular author of Dirty Little Secrets, Dirty Little Secrets of World War II, and Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War offers a comprehensive look at what really happened in our century, exposing the real stories behind what we've always assumed as fact. In a concise, easy-to-read format, Dunnigan divulges 150 of the biggest misconceptions about the twentieth century, organizing them under a broad range of such categories as the military, entertainment, technology, and politics. In the same thoughtful but slightly irreverent style that has characterized the Dirty Little Secrets series, Dunnigan explains why nongovernment organizations are actually more powerful than many governments and how the use of droids or combat robots has gone largely unnoticed. He reports the real reason the human life span is so much longer now, and reveals that this century has been as plagued as the Middle Ages by religious wars. And while we might think that wars or epidemics have been the primary cause of death in the twentieth century, Dunnigan reveals that more people have been killed by their own governments than any other means. Perfectly timed for the approach of a new millennium, Dirty Little Secrets of the Twentieth Century reveals the shape of the past and direction of our future through the best-kept secrets and surprises of the century.

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.

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