3bc0c09b_30_of_130___sorted_by__review___review
[0] checkbox [#] position [cover] cover [title] title Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man [author] author Fury, Dalton [isbn] isbn 0312384394 [isbn13] isbn13 9780312384395 [asin] asin [num pages] num pages 352 pp [avg rating] avg rating 3.97 [num ratings] num ratings 1,544 [date pub] date pub Oct 06, 2008 [date pub (ed.)] date pub edition Oct 06, 2008 [rating] Lucas's rating 3 of 5 stars [my rating] my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves [notes] notes Notes are private! [recommender] recommender none [comments] comments 0 [votes] votes 0 [read count] # times read 1 [date started] date started Feb 06, 2010 [date read] date read Feb 19, 2010 [date added] date added Feb 06, 2010 [date purchased] date purchased [owned] owned [purchase location] purchase location [condition] condition [format] format Hardcover [29] actions view [review] 
review The opening chapters are rough but strengthens once the story gets into Afghanistan and to Tora Bora. There is a long section criticizing the quality The opening chapters are rough but strengthens once the story gets into Afghanistan and to Tora Bora. There is a long section criticizing the quality of journalistic coverage of special operations- the level of real facts getting to the journalists is so low that any noise floor of BS will get amplified into otherwise higher fidelity news coverage. But he neglects to mention that the same is true for his end: there is a long tradition of highly embellished or entirely fabricated stories coming not from the press but from people claiming to be ex-special forces. The extreme secrecy of Delta Force has an unintended effect of hiding its capabilities from the elected leaders and Pentagon officials who are making decisions or recommendations to deploy them. The author makes multiple comments about missions proposed from within Delta Force that were dismissed by superiors as too risky. The author has self-censored the story to make himself anonymous, which tend to undermine the chapters covering the author's life outside of Delta Force. Multiple times in the early chapters there are oblique references that go unremarked. Mostly this is the form of vouching for the competence of an individual, and the most annoying instance Dalton says a unit member is a veteran of a 'little known firefight from Desert Storm'. At that point you'd expect at least another sentence or two telling the story of that firefight but instead the book moves on to something else. Dalton's reasons for the failure accomplish the mission the book is named for are probably very well known and uncontroversial by now, but he has more detail to back them up: 1. Odd decision to pull out much of the U.S. forces from the Tora Bora area prior to the fight, supposedly to trick enemies into staying and fighting. 2. Over reliance on local warlords and fighters who were neither trustworthy nor had proper training. Obviously this was compounded by the problem 1 since there were few NATO forces to pick up the slack. 3. Failure to seal the Pakistan border with NATO or U.S. forces. The sort of pussy-footing involved in that decision underlines the separation between stated and actual policy: the Bush administration wanted the appearance of being 'tough on terror' but compromised in many instances. Today we might hear about 'soft power', but in secret some actions the previous administration was unwilling to take are now policy. ...more
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