Rating: 
Summary: Green Berets and nothing else...except fire power...
Review: I suppose you paint your house from time to time. Suppose you "paint it" with a lazer-gun, connected to a laptop computer, connected to a Stealth Bomber? And the paint pouring down from on high goes EXACTLY where it should on your house! Each color! (Eradicates snails and ants!) Would THAT be good? You can stow your ladder away, Mr. bin Laden (at 6'4", he probably would've made a good painter). Hide in the ceiling, hide in the hall, we ain't gonna forget about you...
Rating: 
Summary: Bush Failed at getting Osama Bin Laden
Review: More than 3 years after Osama Bin Laden and his gang attacked us we still are having to deal with his threats. We need a president who will not lose sight of our true enemies. After losing so many of our young men and women and spending so much money we are no safer than we were on 9/11!
What was the point?
Please vote for John Kerry.
Rating: 
Summary: Impossible to have any confidence in this book
Review: The sheer potential of this book makes it extremely seductive -- it is an account of the Green Beret "A" teams in action in Afghanistan in 2001, written by the author of the first book about the Green Berets way back in 1965. At first glance, it's easy to believe that this might be the definitive early work about war in the post-September 11th world.
But as they say, you should never judge a book by its cover, and there's no better example of that maxim than this incredibly uneven and deceiving book.
I have to say I am grateful to the many cautionary reviews here. They helped soften the blows of aggravation and disappointment early on in the reading, as I learned where the book's center of balance was.
By any reasonable standard, this book is sketchily researched and often very poorly written. In my opinion, the quality of writing in this book would score low marks in any reputable high school. Sources and quotations are almost nonexistent in the text (and lazily compiled in the appendices), and there isn't a single corroborative interview acknowledged. There appear to be no first-hand accounts of enemy engagements shared directly with the author for his book. Battle descriptions are so unreliable that it's impossible to trust the veracity of any of the reports.
The book contains so much hearsay that if the manuscript had ever darkened the desk of a professional fact-checker, it's probable it would never have made it to press. Moore (or his ghostwriter, perhaps) uses extremely declarative language that makes it read more like the adrenaline-charged propaganda of a military pulp novel than anything even remotely resembling journalism.
This cannot possibly be considered an unbiased examination of the war in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war deserves first-class treatment from a professional writer, and unfortunately this is not an example. It reads more like a personal memoir of news reports from the period rather than a direct piece of history. It is arguably the worst-written book I have ever read, and it merits the only one-star review I have ever written on Amazon to this date. Just say no.
Rating:
Summary: Ooooh Ahhhh, or whatever!
Review: I guess this book is the kind of chest-beater and hoist-the-flag nonsense that induces many young Americans to join the military. And as has been the case with US military operations since WW2, Moore outlines how time after time US Special Forces use maximum firepower to achieve some sort of result. `Over the top' seems to be a special section in the US military's training manuals. We Aussies saw how this operated in Vietnam and our troops invariably avoided being anywhere near where Yank troops operated. `Recon by Fire' was a real eye-opener! When it came down to stealth, patrol tactics and contact drills, Yanks always have and always will believe in pumping out as much lead as possible and just see what happens. They didn't learn then, didn't learn in Somalia and sadly, are repeating the same mistakes in Iraq today.I know men who served in both the Brit and Aussie SAS and they suggest that US forces, and this includes Special Forces, are equipped to the hilt but have no idea about basic battle tactics. They seem to follow a philosophy that Might will always triumph. Ask the Vietnamese about the logic of that one!
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