I'd post an Amazon link but ever since they merged with a bunch of looney leftists they've been pushing bush-bash-books, although the good stuff is there if you look.
I remember Murray as one of my visiting professors at West Point (he's an airpower type of guy....). It is a good book .... and as they say in the book, much of what happened in the western desert remains classified, but I should would like to hear/read what really happened out there ... lots of rumors. I still like "Thunder Run" the best.
Sorry, I couldn't get back sooner. The book, "The Iraq War: A Military History" by Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales Jr., was not mentioned. But thanks for the tip. Maj. Gen. Scales is one of the better military commentators. I'll have to get the book.
* * *
Meanwhile, I listed below four other related books (also not mentioned but link on Amazon) that look promising -- though I have not read them:
"Operation Iraqi Freedom : What Went Right, What Went Wrong, and Why" by Walter J. Boyne
"Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq" by Karl Zinsmeister
"Post War Iraq" by Seth Frantzman, current events commentator and military historian
"Understand the 2nd War with Iraq" by Seth Frantzman
* * *
You are right about Amazon. I was wondering what had happened to them.
* * *
Back to the Keegan book -- here's an important excerpt:
"Keegan, the dean of popular military historians and correspondent for Britain's Daily Telegraph, spends over half of his book usefully laying out the history behind Iraq itself, the American contretemps with Iraq and the political, diplomatic and military maneuvering that led up to the invasion in March 2003.
"True to form, he has little time for French posturing, U.N. dithering, European backsliding or Saddam in general.
"But it is in his examination of the military campaign itself that the insight really surfaces. He cuts directly to the heart of the mystery and questions surrounding this operation: "By the beginning of April the evidence of defeat strewed the Iraqi landscape . . . yet not only had Saddam's army disappeared from view. The signs lacked that it had ever been there.
"But the Iraqis did fight, in their fashion, and Keegan credits speed, firepower, command audacity at the highest levels and an American willingness to engage decisively with enemy forces as the ingredients that led to the fall of Baghdad in a few weeks when many observers were predicting a Stalingrad-like slaughterhouse on the banks of the Euphrates. His analysis, while sketchier in detail and less original than his magisterial military histories, is sound and enlightening — from the political to the tactical level."