Ebook: No true glory: a frontline account of the battle for Fallujah

Counterinsurgency, April 2003 to March 2004: "What kind of people loot dirt?" -- Broken chain of command -- "You work with the Americans, you die." -- Backwater problem -- Valentine's Day Massacre -- Siege, March to May 2004: "They can't do that to Americans." -- Mutiny -- Tipping point -- Faint echoes of Tet -- Farmers or shooters? -- Avoiding the perfect storm -- Many die, they are gone -- Easter with the dark side -- "You wanna shoot at me? This ain't no picnic!" -- Fallujah: Symptom of success -- Two-faced Sheikhs and Imams -- Lalafallujah -- Strategic confusion -- Jolan Graveyard -- Deal with the devil -- Reversal, May to October 2004: Bomb factory -- "Keep the noise down." -- All of this for nothing? -- Attack, November to December 2004: Watchdogs -- Merry-go-round at the Jolan -- Phase line Henry -- House from hell -- Five corporals -- Epilogue by inches, not yards, January to May 2005 -- Conclusion no true glory -- Where are they now? -- Order of battle for Operation Phantom Fury -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index.;For months author F.J. "Bing" West lived among the Marines who besieged the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. He interviewed members of the three US Army units that fought in that factious City before the Marines arrived. With access from frontline personnel to senior policymakers and negotiators, West's astonishing account takes us into strategy discussions between generals, on tense night patrols, and into fighting from rooftop to rooftop to tell the story that hasn't been told in the press or on the nightly news. The Marines originally planned to slip into Fallujah "as soft as fog." But in March 2004, after a mob killing and mutilating four American contractors was recorded in images that horrified the world, the Marines attacked. West recounts the ferocious street battles that followed, the stiff resistance and shocking violence that caught many in our military and government off guard, and the sweeping US counterattack that outraged the Arab world. We go behind the scenes to the intense negotiations to persuade Iraqis to take charge and hunt down terrorists like al-Zarqawi, who were using the city as a sanctuary--negotiations whose ramifications will impact Iraq for years to come. The real focus is upon the heroic, everyday efforts of the American fighting soldier and Marine confronting the key paradox of the war: that the Iraqis both wanted and didn't want Americans in their country. No True Glory is a firsthand account of the gritty fighting, political maneuvering, and ongoing struggle in this crucial city?--a microcosm of the confused and frustrating Iraqi war.