The Iraq War: A Military History

Two of America's most distinguished military historians go beyond the blaring headlines, embedded videophone reports and Centcom briefings to analyze events in light of past military experience, present battleground realities and future expectations. The Iraq War puts the recent conflict into context. Drawing on their extensive military expertise, the authors assess the opposing aims of the Coalition forces and the Iraqi regime and explain the day-to-day tactical and logistical decisions of infantry and air command, as British and American troops moved into Basra and Baghdad. They simultaneously step back to examine long-running debates within the US Defense Department about the proper uses of military power and probe the strategic implications of those debates for America's buildup to this war. Surveying the immense changes that have occurred in America's armed forces between the Gulf conflicts of 1991 and 2003 - changes in doctrine as well as weapons - this volume reveals critical meanings and lessons about the new "American way of war" as it has unfolded in Iraq. Williamson Murray offers his insight as principal author of the operations volume of the Gulf War Air Power Survey, commissioned after the 1991 conflict in Kuwait. Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr., US Army retired, brings perspective as head of the Army's team of Gulf War historians. He also served as Commandant of the Army War College.