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Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope | 
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Author: Michael Yon
Publisher: Richard Vigilante Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.79
You Save: $12.16 (41%)
New (25) Used (8) Collectible (1) from $17.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  101 reviews
Sales Rank: 3050
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0980076323
Dewey Decimal Number: 956
EAN: 9780980076325
ASIN: 0980076323
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: New, with dust jacket, spine has not been cracked. 100% Money Back, USMedia ships daily with delivery confirmation.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
Never underestimate the American soldier. That's the moral of former Green Beret Michael Yon's brilliant battle-by-battle, block-by-block tale of how America's new `greatest generation' of soldiers is turning defeat and disaster into victory and hope in Iraq. The American soldier is the reason General David Petraeus's brilliant strategy of moving our soldiers off isolated bases and out among the Iraqi people is working. Working to find and kill terrorists, reclaim neighborhoods, and help lead Iraq to democracy. Yon is no cheerleader. According to the New York Times, he has logged more time in combat situations in Iraq than any other reporter. When failed American leadership was driving Iraq into chaos and civil war, nobody told the story earlier or better than Michael Yon. The top brass was so mad that twice the U.S. military denied him access to Iraq. So Yon has supreme credibility when he says that we are finally winning, not primarily with our overwhelming technology, not with shock and awe destruction, but with the even more powerful force of American values--with the courage and leadership, strength and compassion of our soldiers. Iraqis respect strength, says Yon. They know American soldiers are "great-hearted warriors" who vanquish the Al Qaeda terror gangs that "raped too many women and boys, cut off too many heads, brought drugs into too many neighborhoods." But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic or a school or a neighborhood. They learned the American soldier is not only the most dangerous man in the world, but the best man too. That's what turned defeat into victory. Here is the true, untold story of the American soldier and the courage and values that are bringing victory for America--and Iraq.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 96 more reviews...
 At a price like this why bother with Kindle? July 22, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The sample is great, and I plan to read this book (I have read quite a few others like it). But at $23.96 for a download!!!!!????? I'll wait for the price to come down, if it ever does, or buy a paper copy used.
 Kindle Pricing? July 22, 2008
Why is the Kindle version of this book $4 higher than the current hardback price?
I would spend ten bucks to buy a version that I cannot share with others, but I won't spend more than what I would pay for a hardback.
Great Insight to Counter the MSM's bias July 21, 2008
This book is a much-needed memoir of our involvement in Iraq. For the duration of America's involvement in Iraq, the citizenry has been deprived of an accurate view of what our brave troops are accomplishing in Iraq. The media simply had little interest in actually sharing the positive aspects of our involvement in Iraq. Yon counteracts that tendency by providing a number of stories that provide a more positive aspect of our troop's actions. Simply stated, Murtha's version of the war is not born out by Yon's. If you read this book, your view of the war will be changed. Maybe not radically, but it will be changed to some degree. It is well written, but not unfair or biased. These traits make it a sure way to open your eyes.
A must read for understanding effective counter-insurgency July 21, 2008
This book is a very insightful look into the counter-insurgency battle in Iraq. If you want to understand the context of the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, this book is an invaluable source. It neither paints a rosy picture, nor a bleak one. His first hand accounts of combat and of the equally critical information war are compelling and informative. Micheal Yon effectively brings to light the competing factors and illustrates the many dimensions of this unconventional war.
Book a bit thrown together, but still the best on Iraq War July 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have found it very frustrating how hard it is to get an accurate sense of what is going in the Iraq War. Much of the media, of course, has a bias that they wear on their sleave: they see the war as Vietnam Act Two, and they strain every nerve to find disaster and defeat in everything. We get dozens of stories about prisoner abuse and the alleged massacre in Haditha; we get close to nothing about Medal of Honor winners.
The problem, however, goes beyond ideological bias, as bad as that has been. The larger problem is that the media does not understand what they are looking at. What facts indicate success? What facts indicate failure? The media, by and large, does not have a clue. They thus confine themselves to reporting the obvious -- like the latest car bombs -- and to printing the opinion of some windbag pundit as if it were news. In this respect, the Right has often been no better than the Left. While the Left sees doom and gloom in everything, the Right sees American victory in everything.
In this total desert barren of understanding, Micheal Yon has been and continues to be one of the few beacons of actual information to come out of the war. Yon is not a conventional reporter. Yon is an ex-Green Beret, who turned into a writer and who does freelance reporting from Iraq. I have read his reports for several years now on the internet. They have been the best single source of information that I have found on the war.
In this book, Yon pulls together what he has seen and where the war is. As he sees it, the war has gone through three phases. First, we had the fast and easy phase when American firepower knocked down Saddam Hussein. Second, we had the disasterous phase when grotesque incompetence on the part of Rumsfield and Bush threw the victory away. Their primary error was not to create law and order in the post-Hussein Iraq. We dismantled the Iraqi army and police, leaving Iraq with no functioning government, but we replaced it with nothing for far too long. In Yon's view, we were also too brutal and too rigid in this phase of the war, with the exception of the work done by General Petreaus as commander of the 101st Airborne. All of these mistakes lead to Al Queda taking over most of the country. This then lead to the third phase, in which Al Queda's unbelievable brutality toward the Iraqi people lead them to turn back to the U.S. and gave us a second chance for victory, which, in Yon's view. General Petreaus is brillantly exploiting, in his new role as overall commander.
Yon is very knowledgeable about the technical aspects of his subject. He understands modern weapons and he understands modern war, particularly that part of the war which is fought in the press. What he stresses, however, is primarily morality. Al Queda lost, in his view, because they had no morality. They acted like savage beasts, killing, raping and stealing from the Iraqi people, which lost them the critical moral high ground. In Yon's view, America is now winning the war, because -- while the Iraqis often saw us as stupid and out of touch -- we were never seen as evil. On the contrary, as Yon describes it, the Iraqi people have gained incredible respect for America, because of the exemplary behavior of our troops. The Iraqis respect strength and fighting spirit, which our soldiers have shown in spades. They also deeply love their children and their families. When they came to see Al Queda as threatening their children and their families, and the U.S. military as protecting them, that was the turning point in the war.
This book has flaws as a book. It is not very polished. It reads at times more like a bunch of reports stuck together than a book. It often assumes that the reader knows about things which the reader might well not know about.
But none of this matters. This book tells the truth about the Iraq War. Amid all of the partisan distortion and ideological hype, here is a guy who knows what he is talking about, who loves the United States and our military and who is dedicated to bringing us the truth, in all of its complexity and ugliness.
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