On 29 August 2012 Private Robert Poate, Lance Corporal Rick Milosevic and Sapper James Martin were killed during an insider, or green on blue, attack in Afghanistan. Their killer was supposed to be their ally but was a Taliban sleeper in the ranks of the Afghan National Army. Information provided to the families by rank-and-file soldiers after the event shocked them. When the heavily redacted internal investigation report was received the grieving families knew that it excluded a plethora of incriminating facts. This powerful book is the result of a father's quest to find out all the facts associated with the death of his son. It was a search that revealed a labyrinth of excuses, denials, half-truths, cover-ups, contrived secrecy, incompetence, negligence, orders not followed, and lessons not learnt from the previous twelve years of war in Afghanistan. The determination of Hugh Poate and the other two families to uncover the truth would lead to a civilian Coronial Inquest into combat deaths, the first in the 120-year history of the Australian Army. The Coroner found five systemic deficiencies which contributed to the soldier's deaths. Hugh Poate felt a duty to publish the full story for the benefit of the Australian public which relies on its Defence Force for national security in the hope that Defence, particularly the army, will learn lessons from its failures and improve its standard of leadership. Apart from burying his son, Hugh found writing this book was the most depressing thing he has ever done. Compelling and enraging, this story of the true facts surrounding the devastating loss of three soldiers continues to reverberate beyond their families to the highest levels of defence and government.

Winner of the the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction 'Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age ... it is a classic' Evening Standard 'In the finest traditions of American investigative journalism' The Times 'Spectacular ... makes Bourne movies pale in comparison' Financial Times From the Pulitzer Prize winning of the acclaimed Ghost Wars, this is the full story of America's grim involvement in the affairs of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2016. In the wake of the terrible shock of 9/11, the C.I.A. scrambled to work out how to destroy Bin Laden and his associates. The C.I.A. had long familiarity with Afghanistan and had worked closely with the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union there. A tangle of assumptions, old contacts, favours and animosities were now reactivated. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Laden's successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATO's mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire which lasted many years. At the heart of the problem lay 'Directorate S', a highly secretive arm of the Pakistan state which had its own views on the Taliban and Afghanistan's place in a wider competition for influence between Pakistan, India and China, and which assumed that the U.S.A. and its allies would soon be leaving. Steve Coll's remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong and of many lives lost.

The Mysteries of Haditha is a war story unlike any other. This riveting and hilarious memoir of M. C. Armstrong's journey into the Iraq War as an embedded journalist pulls no punches and lifts the veil on the lies we tell each other-and the ones we tell ourselves. This is a story about both the strong women in Armstrong's life and his road to true manhood. Armstrong's family was nearly ripped at the seams as he struggled to secure his embed with Navy SEALs in the Al Anbar Province in 2008. Armstrong's searingly honest narrative about his relationship with his father, his fiance, and his friend in the SEAL team takes the reader on a nosedive ride from a historically black college in the American South straight into Baghdad, the burn pits, and the desert beyond the mysterious Haditha dam. Honest and vulnerable, tender but fearless, The Mysteries of Haditha is an incredible coming-of-age story and a unique glimpse into the world of the war on terror.

In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union unveiled the BMP, the first true infantry fighting vehicle. A revolutionary design, the BMP marked a significant departure from the traditional armoured personnel carrier, with a lower silhouette and heavier armament than rival APCs. One of the most fearsome light-armoured vehicles of its day, it caused great consternation on the other side of the Iron Curtain as the Americans scrambled to design a machine to rival the BMP. The result was the M2/M3 Bradley. These Cold War icons first clashed - not on the plains of Europe, but in southern Iraq during the Gulf War of 1991. Featuring specially commissioned full-colour artwork, this is the absorbing story of the origins, development and combat performance of the BMP and Bradley, culminating in the bloody battles of the Gulf War.

From the award-winning co-author of I Am Malala, this book asks just how the might of NATO, with 48 countries and 140,000 troops on the ground, failed to defeat a group of religious students and farmers? How did the West's war in Afghanistan and across the Middle East go so wrong? Farewell Kabul tells how the West turned success into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It is the story of well-intentioned men and women going into a place they did not understand at all. And how, what had once been the right thing to do had become a conflict that everyone wanted to exit. It has been a fiasco which has left Afghanistan still one of the poorest and most dangerous nations on earth. The leading journalist on the region with unparalleled access to all key decision makers, Christina Lamb is the best-selling author of 'The Africa House' and I Am Malala, co-authored with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. This revelatory and personal account is her final analysis of the realities of Afghanistan, told unlike anyone before.

Don't Mention the War examines Australian media coverage of the war in Afghanistan. The book demonstrates how the military's public affairs personnel have taken over many of the roles traditionally performed by reporters and shows the restrictive affect of this on media coverage. This tight media management is contrasted with the more open approach of Dutch and Canadian militaries in Afghanistan, a fact that is explained through reference to the different positions of the military within these different nations. As opposed to the Dutch and the Canadians, who had reputations to rebuild, the almost uniquely exalted position of the military in Australia has enabled and driven a media strategy tailored to defend the Australian military's high social standing. In Australian media coverage, the book goes on to argue, the war in Afghanistan has then functioned as another platform for the celebration of national military virtues. What has been offered is less a representation of action than an affirmation of identity; less a chronicle of unfolding events than a testament to immutable character. *** "Foster argues convincingly that the ADF's determination to keep an iron grip on information, based on an entrenched cultural distain for journalists, a resistance to scrutiny, and an obsession with protecting its reputation, meant that what it was actually doing in Afghanistan remained a mystery. While he attributes authorship of this mystery to the ADF hierarchy, supported at times by politicians, journalists don't escape his censure. His book is an indictment of the lack of commitment by Australian editors to covering the Afghan war." - Tom Hyland, Inside Story, January 2014

The war in Afghanistan has been a major policy commitment and central undertaking of the Canadian state since 2001: Canada has been a leading force in the war, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aid and reconstruction. After a decade of conflict, however, there is considerable debate about the efficacy of the mission, as well as calls to reassess Canada's role in the conflict. An authoritative and strongly analytical work, Empire's Ally provides a much-needed critical investigation into one of the most polarizing events of our time. This collection draws on new primary evidence - including government documents, think tank and NGO reports, international media files, and interviews in Afghanistan - to provide context for Canadian foreign policy, to offer critical perspectives on the war itself, and to link the conflict to broader issues of political economy, international relations, and Canada's role on the world stage. Spanning academic and public debates, Empire's Ally opens a new line of argument on why the mission has entered a stage of crisis.

In the early 1990s, false reports of Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait allowing premature infants to die by removing them from their incubators helped to justify the Persian Gulf War, just as spurious reports of weapons of mass destruction later undergirded support for the Iraq War in 2003. In The Discourse of Propaganda, John Oddo examines these and other such cases to show how successful wartime propaganda functions as a discursive process. Oddo argues that propaganda is more than just misleading rhetoric generated by one person or group; it is an elaborate process that relies on recontextualization, ideally on a massive scale, to keep it alive and effective. In a series of case studies, he analyzes both textual and visual rhetoric as well as the social and material conditions that allow them to circulate, tracing how instances of propaganda are constructed, performed, and repeated in diverse contexts, such as speeches, news reports, and popular, everyday discourse. By revealing the agents, (inter)texts, and cultural practices involved in propaganda campaigns, The Discourse of Propaganda shines much-needed light on the topic and challenges its readers to consider the complicated processes that allow propaganda to flourish. This book will appeal not only to scholars of rhetoric and propaganda but also to those interested in unfolding the machinations motivating America's recent military interventions.

This classic history of the Korean War-from its origins through the armistice-is now available in a paperback edition including a substantive introduction that considers the heightened danger of a new Northeast Asian war as Trump and Kim Jung-un escalate their rhetoric. Wada Haruki, one of the world's leading scholars of the war, draws on archival and other primary sources in Russia, China, the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan to provide the first full understanding of the Korean War as an international conflict from the perspective of all the actors involved. Wada traces the North Korean invasion of South Korea in riveting detail, providing new insights into the behavior of Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee. He also provides new insights into the behavior of Communist leaders in Korea, China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and their rivals in other nations. He traces the course of the war from its origins in the North and South Korean leaders' failed attempts to unify their country by force, ultimately escalating into a Sino-American war on the Korean Peninsula. Although sixty-five years have passed since the armistice, the Korean conflict has never really ended. Tensions remain high on the peninsula as Washington and Pyongyang, as well as Seoul and Pyongyang, continue to face off. It is even more timely now to address the origins of the Korean War, the nature of the confrontation, and the ways in which it affects the geopolitical landscape of Northeast Asia and the Pacific region. With his unmatched ability to draw on sources from every country involved, Wada paints a rich and full portrait of a conflict that continues to generate controversy.

In Band 9 der zehnbandigen Gesamtstudie Vom Raketenschach der Kubakrise zum Krieg gegen den Terrorismus," Resultat eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG unterstutzten Forschungsprojektes, soll der Fokus wieder zuruckschwenken auf den Kriegsschauplatz Afghanistan, nun wird der Zeitraum von 2004 bis 2010/2011 betrachtet: Analog zu den Kapiteln zum Afghanistankrieg in den 80er Jahren in Band 5 geht es an dieser Stelle nicht um die Beschreibung einzelner Militaroperationen gegen die wiedererstarkten Taliban, sondern vielmehr um die sicherheitspolitischen Determinanten in der Gesamtregion AfPak (plus Indien). Die Studie thematisiert eingehend die Unterstutzung des pakistanischen Geheimdienstes ISI fur die Extremisten und beleuchtet die aktuell vom pakistanischen Nuklearwaffenarsenal ausgehenden Gefahren, inklusive der nuklearen Ambitionen von al-Qaida. Hier werden naturlich Brucken zuruckgeschlagen zu vorhergehenden Episoden; um hier nur wenige Beispiele anzufuhren: Der mit der Aufsicht uber das pakistanische Nuklearwaffenarsenal beauftragte Generaldirektor der Strategic Plans Division der Joint Services Headquarters" der pakistanischen Streitkrafte, Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, war im Dezember 1971 als junger Offizier in indische Gefangenschaft geraten und hatte spater bei einer pakistanischen Schutztruppe gedient, die sich in Saudi-Arabien um die Sicherheit des Herrscherhauses kummern sollte. Und was die nuklearen Optionen und Doktrinen der Atommachte Pakistan und Indien anbetrifft, so werden unerwartete Reminiszenzen wach an die Konfrontation zwischen NATO und Warschauer Pakt im Kalten Krieg (etwa bei der verstorenden pakistanischen Sehjra-Option"). Die indischen Militarstrategen, welche traditionell der Sundarji Doctrine" mit ihren massiven Operationen anhingen, vollzogen gerade im Gefolge der Twin Peaks Crisis" (der Konfrontation mit Pakistan 2001/2002) den Wandel hin zum Cold Start"-Konzept fur begrenzte, selektive Operationen. Im Zuge des US-Schlages gegen die Festung Osama" in Abbottabad sind in Islamabad Befurchtungen laut geworden, Indien konnte analoge Kommandoaktionen gegen Ziele in Pakistan durchfuhren - Kommandoaktionen, wie sie gerade in besagtem Cold Start"-Konzept tatsachlich vorgesehen sind. Und schliesslich analysiert die Studie den Weg der Obama-Administration hin zu surge" in Afghanistan (Ende 2009) und die mit jenem Strategiewandel hin zur COIN verbundenen muhsamen Fortschritte bzw. Ruckschlage. Den ultimativen Schlusspunkt in jener Darstellung bildet dann der Raid der SEALs gegen Osama bin Ladens Anwesen in Abbottabad und die schwere Krise in den amerikanisch-pakistanischen Beziehungen. Bei jener Reise durch die jungsten Dekaden der Militargeschichte hat die Studie immer wieder auch die einzelnen Entwicklungsphasen und Zwischenetappen der Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) bzw. der Militarischen Transformation" beleuchtet, angefangen vom Einsatz der Prototypen der Prazisionsmunition (PGMs) und der ersten Drohnen im Vietnamkrieg bzw. im Jom-Kippur-Krieg (vgl. die Bande 3 und 4) uber die Debatten zum Themenbereich nukleare PGMs" und mini-nukes" in der Nuklearen Planungsgruppe der NATO (vgl. Band 2) bis schliesslich hin zur Entwicklung des AirLand Battle-Konzeptes (vgl. Band 6) und zum Kriegsbild des Golfkrieges 1990/91 (vgl. Band 7). Diesen roten Faden aufgreifend widmet sich die Studie nun der Frage, inwieweit das neue" Kriegsbild (die aus dem Irak und aus Afghanistan bekannten asymmetrischen Konfliktszenarien und die COIN-Gegenrezepte) auch Einfluss nehmen auf die aktuellen bzw. bevorstehenden Phasen der Militarischen Transformation"

As the bloodshed in Iraq intensified in 2005, Afghanistan quickly faded from the nation's front pages to become the "other war," supposedly going well and largely ignored. In fact, the insurgency in Afghanistan was about to break out with renewed force, the drug problem was worsening, and international coordination was losing focus. That July, Ronald Neumann arrived in Kabul from Baghdad as the U.S. ambassador, bringing the experience of a career diplomat whose professional lifetime had been spent in the greater Middle East, beginning thirty-eight years earlier in the same country in which it ended-Afghanistan. Neumann's account of how the war in Afghanistan unfolded over the next two years is rich with heretofore unexamined details of operations, tensions, and policy decisions. He demonstrates why the United States was slow to recognize the challenge it faced and why it failed to make the requisite commitment of economic, military, and civilian resources. His account provides a new understanding of the problems of alliance warfare in conducting simultaneous nation building and counterinsurgency. Honest in recounting failures as well as successes, the book is must reading as much for students of international affairs who want to understand the reality of diplomatic policymaking and implementation in the field as for those who want to understand the nation's complex"other war."

Drawing on reinterpretations of melancholia and collective remembrance, Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide explores the multi-layered implications of divided Korea's liminality, or its perceived "in-betweenness" in space and time. Offering a timely reconsideration of the pivotal period following the inter-Korean Summit of June 2000, this book focuses on a series of emotionally charged meetings among family members who had lost all contact for over fifty years on opposite sides of the Korean divide. With the scope of its analysis ranging from regional geopolitics and watershed political rituals to everyday social dynamics and intimate family narratives, this study provides a lens for approaching the cultural process of moving from a disposition of enmity to one of recognition and engagement amid the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.

Canada's six-year military mission in Afghanistan's Kandahar province was one of the most intense and challenging moments in Canadian foreign affairs since the Korean War. A complex war fought in an inhospitable environment, the Afghanistan mission tested the mettle not just of Canada's soldiers but also of its politicians, public servants, and policy makers. In Adapting in the Dust, Stephen M. Saideman considers how well the Canadian government, media, and public managed the challenge. Building on interviews with military officers, civilian officials, and politicians, Saideman shows how key actors in Canada's political system, including the prime minister, the political parties, and parliament, responded to the demands of a costly and controversial mission. Some adapted well; others adapted poorly or - worse yet - in ways that protected careers but harmed the mission itself. Adapting in the Dust is a vital evaluation of how well Canada's institutions, parties, and policy makers responded to the need to oversee and sustain a military intervention overseas, and an important guide to what will have to change in order to do better next time.

Based on in-depth interviews with tribal Sheiks involved in the Awakening and their American military counterparts, Confronting al Qaeda is a study of decision-making processes and the political psychology of the Sunni Awakening in al Anbar. It traces the change in American military strategy that made the Awakening collaboration between the Sunni tribes and the U.S. forces possible. It explains how the evolution of the tribal leaders' perspective and of the American military strategy led to defeat al Qaeda in al Anbar. The process of these changing mutual images is detailed as well as how the cooperation between groups led to further evolution of perceptions. Political and military realities urgently forced these perceptual and social identity shifts initially, but the process of cooperation and engagement accelerated these shifts through increasingly mutually beneficial cooperation and interaction during the battle with al Qaeda in Iraq.

A Portal in Space, set in Basra, Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), follows the lives of Anwar, a newly minted architect, and the other members of his affluent family as they attempt to maintain a sense of normality during the frequent bombing attacks from Iran. When Anwar joins the Iraqi army and then goes missing in action, his family struggles to cope with uncertainty over his fate. His mother falls into depression and secludes herself in the family home, while his father shifts his attention from his duties as a judge to the weekly pilgrimage to Baghdad seeking information on his son-and to Zahra, the young widow he meets there. Emotionally engaging, A Portal in Space is a wry, wise tale of human beings striving to retain their humanity during a war that is anything but humane. Mahmoud Saeed succeeds brilliantly in bringing the sights and sounds of Iraq to life on the page-whether in a bunker on the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War or in the parlor of a fortune-teller in Baghdad. As Zahra says of the novel she is writing: "It is a normal novel that contains love, war, life, deceit, and death."

Two years before the action in Lone Survivor, a Green Berets A Team conducted a very different, successful mission in Afghanistan's notorious Pech Valley. Led by Captain Ronald Fry, the Hammerhead Six mission applied the principles of unconventional warfare to "win hearts and minds" and fight against the terrorist insurgency. In 2003, the Special Forces soldiers entered an area later called "the most dangerous place in Afghanistan." Here, where the line between civilians and armed zealots was indistinct, they illustrated the Afghan proverb: "I destroy my enemy by making him my friend." Fry recounts how they were seen as welcome guests rather than invaders. Soon after their deployment ended, the Pech Valley reverted to turmoil. Their success was never replicated. Hammerhead Six finally reveals how cultural respect, hard work (and the occasional machine-gun burst) were more than a match for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Grappling with centuries-old feuds, defeating a shrewd insurgency, and navigating the sometimes paralyzing bureaucracy of the U.S. military are issues that prompt sleepless nights for both policy makers in Washington and soldiers at war, albeit for different reasons. Few, however, have dealt with these issues in the White House situation room and on the front line. Michael G. Waltz has done just that, working as a policy advisor to Vice President Richard B. Cheney and also serving in the mountains of Afghanistan as a Green Beret, directly implementing strategy in the field that he helped devise in Washington. In Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan, Waltz shares his unique firsthand experiences, revealing the sights, sounds, emotions, and complexities involved in the war in Afghanistan. Waltz also highlights the policy issues that have plagued the war effort throughout the past decade, from the drug trade, to civilian casualties, to a lack of resources in comparison to Iraq, to the overall coalition strategy. At the same time, he points out that stabilizing Afghanistan and the region remains crucial to national security and that a long-term commitment along the lines of South Korea or Germany is imperative if America is to remain secure.

This edited volume describes various analytic methods used by intelligence analysts supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as members of the Iraq and Afghan Threat Finance Cells-interagency intelligence teams tasked to disrupt terrorist and insurgent funding. All contributors have deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan and detail both the bureaucratic and intellectual challenges in understanding terrorist and insurgent finance networks and then designing operations to attack such networks via conventional military operations, Special Forces kill/capture targeting operations, and non-kinetic operations such as asset freezing or diplomacy. The analytic methods described here leverage both quantitative and qualitative methods, but in a language and style accessible to those without a quantitative background. All methods are demonstrated via actual case studies (approved for release by the U.S. government) drawn from the analysts' distinct experiences while deployed. This book will be of interest to current or aspiring intelligence analysts, students of security studies, anti-money laundering specialists in the private sector, and more generally to those interested in understanding how intelligence analysis feeds into live operations during wartime at a very tactical level.

The first comprehensive look at youth living in a country attempting to rebuild itself after three decades of civil conflict, Children of Afghanistan relies on the research and fieldwork of twenty-one experts to cover an incredible range of topics. Focusing on the full scope of childhood, from birth through young adulthood, this edited volume examines a myriad of issues: early childhood socialization in war and peace; education, literacy, vocational training, and apprenticeship; refugee life; mental and physical health, including disabilities and nutrition; children's songs, folktales, and art; sports and play; orphans; life on the streets; child labor and children as family breadwinners; child soldiers and militarization; sexual exploitation; growing up in prison; marriage; family violence; and other issues vital to understanding, empowerment, and transformation.

Children of Afghanistan is the first volume that not only attempts to analyze the range of challenges facing Afghan children across class, gender, and region but also offers solutions to the problems they face. With nearly half of the population under the age of fifteen, the future of the country no doubt lies with its children. Those who seek peace for the region must find solutions to the host of crises that have led the United Nations to call Afghanistan "the worst place on earth to be born." The authors of Children of Afghanistan provide child-centered solutions to rebuilding the country's cultural, social, and economic institutions.

The US-led coalition which launched an invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 led to a decade-long military presence in the country. In the run-up to that invasion, many comparisons were made with the 1991 Gulf War. Ahmed Ijaz Malik takes these two instances of military intervention by Republican US governments to highlight how the official discourse of leaders and decision-makers has an impact on foreign policy and its results. By taking these two examples, he examines how discourse affects real events, and the extent to which the legacy of the Cold War has influenced the decisions which are made at the upper echelons of the US government. US Foreign Policy and the Gulf Wars critically analyses the post-Cold War liberal cosmopolitan and realist discourses related to these two instances of US military intervention. Using an approach which Malik labels 'critical realism', this book examines the ways in which discourses often act as ideological covers for material interests, whilst still not holding a deterministic view whereby these interests alone shape policies. From this perspective, this book assesses the themes of 'Just War', humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism. It furthermore uses the approach of 'critical realism' to engage with a variety of arguments on the emerging role of the US - as they were displayed in academic discourses and other intellectual contributions around each of the 1991 and 2003 wars. Malik relates these discussions to an analysis of the official discourses, documents and policies displayed prior to the 1991 and 2003 wars, as well as to an examination of the resulting actual conduct. Since the implications of the US military presence in the Middle East are so central to the study of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will be invaluable for specialists in these disciplines, as well as for those interested in policy formation and the wider Middle East.

Band 8 der Gesamtstudie Vom Raketenschach der Kubakrise zum Krieg gegen den Terrorismus," Resultat eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG unterstutzten Forschungsprojektes, stellt den Irakkrieg der Administration von George W. Bush ins Zentrum der Analysen. Bei der Behandlung jenes weiten Themenfeldes setzt die Studie folgende Schwerpunkte: Besonderes Interesse gilt zum einen der Vorbereitungsphase, dem militarischen Planungsprozess (gepragt insbesondere durch administrationsinterne Grabenkampfe und durch die Spannungen zwischen Rumsfeld und den Spitzenmilitars) und der Vernachlassigung der Stabilisierungsoperationen. In diesem Kontext wird nicht zuletzt auch auf zwei bemerkenswerte Konfliktsimulationen eingegangen, auf Desert Crossing" von 1999 und auf Millennium Challenge 2002." Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt markiert die Darstellung der Entscheidungsprozesse in Washington, welche dann 2006/2007 den Weg fur die surge" im Irak bereiteten. Dazwischengeschaltet ist ein Theoriekapitel, welches sich mit den Charakteristika und Paradoxien des asymmetrischen Krieges und mit den Grundzugen von Counterinsurgency-Operationen (COIN) beschaftigt."

Mit Band 7 verlasst die zehnbandige Gesamtstudie Vom Raketenschach der Kubakrise zum Krieg gegen den Terrorismus," Resultat eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG unterstutzten Forschungsprojektes, die Ara des Kalten Krieges. Als eine analytische Brucke zwischen den beiden Hemispharen" der Langen Kriege fungiert nun die Darstellung des Golfkrieges von 1990/91. Die Studie prasentiert zum einen die jungsten Erkenntnisse zu den Motiven Saddam Husseins und zur Disposition der irakischen Streitkrafte (etwa betreffend den Einsatz der Scud-Systeme oder von Massenvernichtungswaffen). Zum anderen wirft die Untersuchung einen Blick auf die Entscheidungsprozesse auf amerikanischer Seite, unter Betonung der Unterschiede wie der Parallelen zur Vorgeschichte des Irakkrieges 2003: So werden die Debatten innerhalb des Fuhrungszirkels von George H.W. Bush analysiert, welche gekennzeichnet waren von Spannungen zwischen JCS-Chairman Colin Powell und Verteidigungsminister Dick Cheney. James Bakers Allianzdiplomatie soll ebenso betrachtet werden wie die Anatomie der amerikanisch-israelischen Beziehungen. Und auch das Verhaltnis zwischen der US-Regierung und dem Hause Saud wird sehr eingehend beleuchtet (und dies schlagt den Bogen zuruck zu den Ausfuhrungen uber die amerikanisch-saudischen Beziehungen in den 70er und 80er Jahren in den Banden 4 und 5): Dabei werden etwa neue Forschungsergebnisse verarbeitet, welche die Cheney-Mission nach Djiddah und die Audienz bei Konig Fahd vom 7. August 1990 in ein neues Licht rucken. Aber auch andere Aspekte jenes Golfkrieges wie die Arbeit der US-Nachrichtendienste, die Triumphe, aber auch die Defizite der amerikanischen Aufklarung, werden thematisiert. Dann vollzieht die Studie einen Zeitsprung und blendet uber in die Zeit nach den Terroranschlagen des 11. September 2001: Das nun folgende Kapitel behandelt die erste Phase des Afghanistankrieges 2001/2002 und stellt die von der Bush-Administration begangenen Kardinalfehler heraus - bei der Jagd auf Osama bin Laden wie auch bei der Stabilisierung Afghanistans. Exemplarisch werden die Gefechte um Tora Bora und die Operation Anaconda" im Detail analysiert. Eine Ursache fur jenes Scheitern, fur jene bei der Befriedung Afghanistans von Anfang an begangenen Konstruktionsfehler liegt naturlich in der Konzentration der Administration von George W. Bush auf den Lieblingsfeind" Saddam Hussein begrundet.