Rating: 
Summary: interesting, should be more to it
Review: This book is interesting as one of the first book that details the covert war and cubsequent victory in afghanistan. Most interesting is the sotry of Adbul Hak, the Pashtun leader who died because he started a rebellion too early. This book explores the special ops men who helped crush the taliban. An informatie, interesting book that takes us from the briefing room to the battle field, a neccesary book in the war on terror genre.
Rating:
Summary: Some great anecdotes yet not the whole story.
Review: Mr. Moore is obviously predisposed towards Green Berets, and that much is evident to the attentive reader. However, his bias does not detract from an informative body of work about the beginning of the Afghanistan campaign in the US War on Terror. The anecdotal stories of the teams, preparation, and insertion are very interesting on their own. What goes on in Afghanistan afterwards due to the actions of the A-teams is also astounding in many respects, out of all proportion to their available manpower. However more than a little pointless ire is directed towards other US services IMO, to no great benefit for anyone, especially not for my own reading experience.I also don't think that Mr. Moore makes enough mention of the difficulty in influencing proxies instead of commanding loyal forces. There is a world of difference, and would have changed more than a few outcomes if there had been enough US forces in the region. However that was not possible for obvious reasons. Overall, I highly recommend this book, due to the amount of information in it regarding the first strike against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It has it's biases, but they aren't serious and the book has gripping stories.
Rating:
Summary: Great book on our modern day military capabilities
Review: This books follows about 10 SF teams through Afghanistan in the days following Sep. 11th, 2001. Mr. Moore did an exceptional job keeping the separate teams separate, so as not to confuse the reader about which team was where. It is an amazing story of how, for the most part less than 100 SF commandos, were able to join up with Northern Alliance free fighters and bring the much larger Taliban force to its knees. Moore describes in detail the experiences of many of the soldiers in dealing with "friendly" forces, in a land where mostly everyone is just out for themselves. The professionalism of the troopers is made apparent as they are able to distinguish friend from foe, fact from fiction while operating deep behind enemy lines for months at a time, sometimes in teams as big as 2 people! This is a must read for any military buff or historian and Robin Moore should be congradulated on bringing the heroic efforts of some of our soldiers to light.
Rating:
Summary: Imperfect but interesting
Review: The most frequent criticism of this book is that author Robin Moore and his writing team are too enamored of the Green Berets to write an objective history of their role in recent events. The criticism is legitimate. In my own view, however, the fact that every chapter is suffused with heroic professionalism says as much about the Special Forces as it does about Robin Moore. Enthusiasm, remember, can also be called "commitment to mission." I like this book because it provides a wealth of detail that I have not read elsewhere. The narrative arc in this story might have been stronger had Moore not chosen to write about a different team in each chapter, but given the scope of the campaign he is trying to cover, Moore's choice seems reasonable. A few cringe-inducing moments keep the book from winning five stars. Another reviewer has pointed out the ignorance of reading too much into what Senator Ted Kennedy does at a Catholic funeral Mass for a fallen soldier. Beyond that, some people will chuckle over the chauvinism of describing a twelve-man team in Chapter 16 as being composed of 'eleven men and an Air Force sergeant.' Despite lapses like these, however, the book remains a smoothly-written, formidably researched chronicle of tough men doing a tough job. Readers who pay attention will learn a lot about strategy and tactics along the way.
Rating: 
Summary: So Disjointed I Gave Up
Review: This book is very poorly written. So many people are injected into the text with little or no introduction. It's impossible to keep up with the players without taking notes. The story lines repeatedly jump all over the place with no warning or explanation. The book is extremely difficult to follow even for an avid reader with a great interest in the subject matter. I simply couldn't finish the book.
Rating:
Summary: Shameful
Review: I feel bad for the author as he has fallen for a convicted con-man. This lowlife took advantage of Mr. Moore in an atempt to gain fame and fortune. Well I for one hope Mr. Idema gets what is comming to him.....infamy and missfortune. I hope this does not diminish in any way the great deeds that the brave SF soldiers did. These men are heroes and should be thought of that way, just not the one mentioned in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Spin City?
Review: One excerpt from Robin Moore's The Hunt For Bin Laden serves to illustrate the main problem with this account of the Special Forces operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaida. The problem is one of veracity.
Speaking of the funeral Mass in Massachusetts of one the Special Forces noncoms killed near Kandahar, Moore pens the following interesting paragraph, "Near the end of the Mass, Senator Ted Kennedy turned and robustly shook the generals' hands, saying "Peace."". Most non-Catholics reading this passage would infer that Kennedy had suddenly made some sort of highly inappropriate anti-war political statement, during the funeral of a war hero no less. A Catholic would know that this is undoubtably a description of a normal part of the liturgy of the Mass just before Communion known as the rite of peace when the congregation is injoined to "Offer each other a sign of peace". Congregants shake hands with those near them and tell them "Peace be with you". No doubt the generals robustly shook Kennedy's hand saying "Peace" at the same time.
Using clumsy and inaccurate innuendo to make some sort of statement in this context has to make one wonder how much of the "revelations and inside information" that constitute the main part of the book are factual and how much have been subjected to this particular form of spin.
Rating:
Summary: A worthless book
Review: This is the most poorly written book that I have ever read. If I could rate it zero stars I would have done so. I did not finish it and it is one of the few books that I have ever thrown into the trash. Other reviewers that were there say that it is largely fiction. Robin Moore and Random House have pulled a scam in order to make a few dollars.
Rating:
Summary: The Hunt For The Correct Title
Review: It is really something that this author picked the one title of this book that would mislead the public the most. The book focused on the war effort that the Special Forces were involved in. The book does not cover the hunt for UBL other then in the context of the overall effort the Special Forces troops put into the over throwing of the Taliban government. The book is also not a review of the overall war effort. The book is good at what it does deliver which, is a good look at the battles the Special Forces groups were involved in and their methods of combat. The author spells out a lot of good information that I had not previously heard in the media. He does a good job in detailing out the different combat operations and does not get to in depth with the gun ho macho descriptions that somehow find there way in to most combat books. I would have liked the author to have provided a little bit of an overall review of the war effort to help the reader understand the Special Forces operations and how they fit into the full story of the war. The book is an interesting review of fighting, but I would have liked a bit more detail. I felt the author was skimming the surface on many different sections and did not seam to give the reader the full story. Overall it is easy to read and interesting book. It gave the reader a good view of the Special Forces work and good details on the prison uprising, the CIA officer's death, the Tora Bora effort and operation Anaconda.
Rating:
Summary: Pulp Fiction
Review: Although I found this book at some points interesting, I was really turned off by Moore's constant good ole' boy, red-blooded all-American remarks. All Green Berets are heroes and John Wayne is their great inspirational leader. What a joke. Did somebody ever tell mr. Moore that John Wayne was an actor? Also I found his chapter about John Walker Lindh nothing but black propaganda. I followed the war in Afghanistan very closely on all international news channels, and was therefore not really surprised by what was written - I've heard it all before on tv and have read it in the papers.
If you were an a different planet during that war, you may learn something from this book. But for me, I only wondered how mr. Moore was given all this acces to SF people - surely the guy has a mindset which was prevalent in the fifties. This book has no journalistic value in my opinion. It could have been written by the information centre of the Pentagon. Who knows, may FOX channel may make it into a John Wayne-style movie one day.
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