Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 6
Introduction: Hanging Around With Heroes 9
1 The Jihad 15
Wake-up Call 15
Who is the Enemy? 20
Oil Fuels the Jihad 22
The "Lands of the Prophet" 25
We Don't Get it 26
What Do they Want? Why Do they Hate Us? 28
2 Counter-Attack 31
Fighting Back 31
A New Kind of War 35
The First American Casualty 39
The Marines Enter the Fray 40
Into the Hindu Kush 46
Karzai's Courage 51
3 Expanding the War 53
The Case Against Saddam 53
Preparation for Preemption 56
WMD: The Casus Belli 61
Preparing for the Road to Baghdad 65
Embedded—Finally 69
Good to Go 73
4 Hostilities Have Commenced 79
Into the Fight 82
Helicopter Down! 84
Cas-Evac! 95
5 To the Banks of the Euphrates 99
An Nasiriyah, the Bloody Gauntlet 102
With HMM-268 & RCT-5 106
6 Mother of all Sandstorms 109
7 To the Gates of Baghdad 117
They all Fall Down 120
Quagmire 122
Make Ready to Move Out 124
Drive North 126
Across the Tigris 129
Press on to the Capital 130
8 Into Baghdad and Beyond 133
The "Thunder Runs" 138
9 Liberation Loses its Luster 153
Tikrit, Iraq 153
Bayji, Iraq 154
Missteps and the Rise of the Insurgency 158
Dying to Kill Us 164
10 Bloody AnBar 169
"The Most Violent Place on the Planet" 169
Battlefield Innovation 174
"No Greater Friend, No Worse Enemy" 177
No Good News? 179
Hearts and Minds 180
The Fight for Fallujah 183
11 Will Democracy Work? 187
The Election in Afghanistan 187
Iraqi Vote I: National Assembly Election 189
Iraq Vote II: The Constitutional Referendum 192
Iraq Vote III: The New Government 194
12 Turnaround 199
Closing the Terror Pipeline 199
Ramadi: IED Central 206
The Awakening 211
13 Hero Values 217
Courage 217
Commitment 220
Compassion 223
Faith 227
14 Wounded Warriors 233
Sgt Luke Cassidy 235
Sgt Gregory Edwards 236
2nd Lt. Andrew Kinard 238
LCpl Aaron Mankin 241
The Bottom Line 244
15 The "Other Heroes" 247
When Dad is at War 251
Keeping it Together at Home and at War 254
E-mail Cuts the Time but Can't Close the Distance 257
16 Getting it Done! 259
How Iraq has Changed 262
Why Don't We Hear More of this Kind of News? 268
How they Did it 270
Can it all Still Go Wrong? 274
Where We Could Do Better 274
17 Dispatches From A Forgotten War 279
Index 297
Glossary 301
Image Credits 303
Freedom Alliance 304
