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| Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Yon
Publisher: Richard Vigilante Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $18.99
You Save: $10.96 (37%)
New (34) Used (10) Collectible (2) from $15.24
Avg. Customer Rating:  116 reviews
Sales Rank: 5288
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0980076323
Dewey Decimal Number: 956
EAN: 9780980076325
ASIN: 0980076323
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
A first hand perspective that is a MUST read by every citizen April 21, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
As a former Green Beret who fought in Iraq over several years and contributed to Mr. Yon's book this is a must read. The men and women fighting this conflict desperately deserve their story told from a first hand perspective. The lessons learned and successes should be shared throughout the military and civilian leadership so that mistakes are not repeated.
The positive perspective and the successes noted in Michael Yon's book should be a blue print for the media on how to accurately report the conflict in Iraq instead of reflecting merely on the negative. Read and share it with everyone you know.
 He was there April 21, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is a great reference from someone who has seen Iraq over the years and how it has changed and is changing. He writes about how he thought the US messed up in the early going and is now fixing the problems that were caused as a result.
I don't know if I agree with him on everything, but I learned a lot I didn't know and he fit a lot that did know into a different pattern than I had seen before.
You will understand a lot after you've read it. You don't have to agree with him, but you will have much more information to form your own opinions.
He's one of the true journalists of this war, along with a few he names in the book and others like Michael Totten, Bill Ardolino and Bill Roggio.
Book unpolished, but still the best on Iraq War July 13, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
It has been almost impossible to get accurate information on the Iraq War. Much of the media, of course, has a bias; they see the war as Vietnam Act Two, and they strain every nerve to find disaster and defeat in everything. We get dozens of stories about prisoner abuse and the alleged massacre in Haditha; we get close to nothing about Medal of Honor winners.
The problem, however, goes beyond bias. The larger problem is that the media does not understand what they are looking at. What indicates success? What indicates failure? The media does not have a clue. They thus confine themselves to reporting the obvious -- like the latest car bombs -- and to printing the opinions of windbag pundits as if they were news.
Micheal Yon has been one of the only accurate sources of information on the war. He knows what he is talking about, and he tells it like it is. In this book, Yon pulls together what he has seen. As he sees it, the war has gone through three phases. First, we had the fast and easy phase when American firepower knocked down Saddam Hussein. Second, we had the disasterous phase when incompetence by Rumsfield and Bush threw the victory away. Completely ignoring the lessons of the past, they failed to create law and order in the post-Hussein Iraq. We dismantled the Iraqi army and police, leaving a vacuum that Al Queda was delighted to fill. This then lead to the third phase, in which Al Queda's brutality toward the Iraqi people lead them to turn back to the U.S. and gave us a second chance for victory, which, in Yon's view. General Petreaus is brillantly exploiting, in his new role as overall commander.
Al Queda lost, in his view, because they had no morality. They acted like savage beasts, killing, raping and stealing. In Yon's view, America is now winning the war, because -- while the Iraqis often saw us as stupid and out of touch -- we were never seen as evil. On the contrary, as Yon describes it, the Iraqi people have gained incredible respect for America, because of the exemplary behavior of our troops. The Iraqis respect strength and fighting spirit, which our soldiers have shown in spades. They also deeply love their children and their families. When they came to see Al Queda as threatening their children and their families, and the U.S. military as protecting them, that was the turning point in the war.
This book has flaws as a book. It is not very polished. It reads at times more like a bunch of reports stuck together than a book. It often assumes that the reader knows about things which the reader might well not know about.
But none of this matters. This book tells the truth about the Iraq War. Amid all of the partisan distortion and ideological hype, here is a guy who knows what he is talking about, who loves the United States and our military and who is dedicated to bringing us the truth, in all of its complexity and ugliness.
INDESPENSABLE WAR JOURNALISM April 30, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Mike Yon is a "hands on" reporter...he doesn't talk about theories of the war--he walks his readers through it. He doesn't tell readers what to think about the war--he describes the details and allows the readers the freedom come to their own conclusions. Deep. Thought provoking.
Another thing I really value about Yon's writing--he humanizes the Iraqis. They are so "far" away from the American public, that they are often not even considered when discussing the tragedies and losses of this war. If you ask the average citizen here how many they think have died in Iraq, they will almost always just refer to the Americans.
Yes, this is a war influenced by and affected greatly by media...and Yon's journalism is one of our greatest assets in this fight. His words are brutally honest in describing what he saw, encountered and experienced, but then, that is exactly what makes this work, so refreshingly unbiased, so valuable. Way to go, Mike!
Calm, methodical, and even-handed. Above all, convincing. May 1, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I got turned on to this book by Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, [...]-- who often links to Michael Yon. MY review is choppy, but the book is not. I'm just shepherding a couple of children and it's tough to get my thoughts together. In contrast, Yon's writing in Moment of Truth is very lucid. Don't judge the book by my writing style, please.
I didn't know it would be such a good read. My first impression was that Yon brought clarity to the myriad units fighting, and he clarifies the relationships between our allies and our enemies. This alone would be reason to buy the book -- current media war reporting runs to lazy, ill-informed, agenda-driven, or incomplete stories. It has been almost impossible to decipher WHO are our allies, and WHO are the enemy. Clarity.
Yon relates events even-handedly. There is no lip gloss on this book -- you are going to get the straight story. Did we execute poorly at the beginning of the war, to the detriment of our credibility? We did. Did it nearly cost us the war? It did. Have things changed? They have.
Yon is trustworthy. He has been embedded with US and British units since 2004, fighting with them. He's not a cheerleader. He's a professional. We will win counterinsurgency with media reporting such as his.
Yon lays out story after story of how Iraqi governance is being built through watching the example of American soldiers.
The book is up to date, with reporting into January of 2008.
It's a fast read -- takes maybe 2 evenings, but it's the war coverage the American public should have been getting all along.
For me, the most hopeful takeaway from this book is that the US Army is becoming competent at counterinsurgency and urban warfare. This is encouraging news. Our soldiers have always been the best among us. It is the hearts of the American soldiers that is turning Iraq into a success story.
Get it and read it -- I am so glad I did.
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