Excellent Perspective. As mother of two sons in the military. | Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for...

An Honest Account | Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington | Paul Rieckhoff

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	• Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington Paul Rieckhoff NAL Hardcover, 2006 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 166 reviews
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highly recommended

Chasing Ghosts: Authentic and Atypical

Allow me to start by saying that I am both a veteran of the Iraq War and I fancy myself a bit of a journalist. When I picked up this book, I had just returned home from the desert. I naturally thought that I could turn my experiences into a workable story, and so I decided to read some of the works by other veteran writers. Chasing Ghosts is part war journal, part memoir. With journalistic detail, Paul is able to transport the reader into the moment with equal parts remarkable detail and emotional atmosphere.

However where "The Last True Story I Will Ever Tell," "My War," and "Generation: Kill," tell their stories mostly through their characters, "Chasing Ghosts," makes the war effort itself a character. Rather than a tell-all book about what is in the minds of infantrymen, this story is a scathing rebuke of the handling of this war. While many paid partisan lip service to the achievements or problems of the war, this book is a first-hand account of exactly where the mismanagement took place. Yet all of it is done with a genuine humility that is consistent with the character of the author, as many know who are aware of his work with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American at [...].

If one has served or merely wonders what it would have been like, this book contains passages that will move your heart and blow your mind. While there have been many books written about the Iraq War, "Chasing Ghosts" offers a rare point-of-view on the happenings of war.

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Excellent Perspective. As mother of two sons in the military.

Both my sons served in Iraq and are still in the military. I've heard from both of them, read letters from both, gained their perspectives, read and watched the news since the day the war started and this book has provided an overall perspective on what's the situation in Iraq that I truly appreciate. It is a point of view that I had yet to explore. I thoroughly enjoyed it and my two sons are looking forward to reading it as well. Highly recommend it.

An Honest Account

Paul Rieckhoff gives an honest account of life in the early part of the invasion. Poor planning and egotistical views of the US's ability to free Iraq and it's people created unthinkable situations for unprepaired soldiers. Rieckhoff takes you into his own experiences dealing with these situations and gives a soldiers account of how he went into war with the army that he had, not the army that he wanted. A very easy read...I've read it three times now.

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How a person finds themself becoming an advocate.

"Chasing Ghosts" although an easy read it is also an informative read to people who may not understand how the Army functions. It also shows how the leadership can become disfunctional if they don't do the right things when sending the military to war. With the problems and challenges one soldier faced it also help to create a place for the veterans of the war to come together and help each other deal with the challenges they face. No one knows how the future will play out to these veterans, hopefully with books like this one this country will better understand just what should be done to avoid the problems this book points out.

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As a First Lieutenant and Infantry Platoon Leader for the U.S. Army National Guard charged with leading thirty-eight men in Iraq, Paul Rieckhoff followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. After Rieckhoff volunteered to take part in the invasion of Iraq, he and his soldiers spent almost a year in one of the most dangerous and volatile areas of Baghdad, where they struggled to maintain order, protect Iraqi civilians, track down insurgents, and defend themselves against sniper and roadside bomb attacks.

But it was clear to Rieckhoff almost from the get-go that America's mission in Iraq was deeply flawed - and that his platoon was overchallenged and underequipped. If there was a plan to stabilize Baghdad after the invasion, no one had let them in on it. And with so many obstacles to overcome, they faced enemies that included thousands of armed, angry, and unemployed men who had been unleashed into the streets when the U.S. government disbanded the Iraqi army.

The way that Rieckhoff responded to these and other challenges over the next ten months set him on a course that would forever change his life. And when Rieckhoff finally came home, he vowed to tell Americans the truth, however controversial, about what was going on in Iraq. He publicly demanded accountability from elected officials, created the first organization specifically for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and took the new fight to the airwaves and the halls of power in Washington.

For anyone who wonders what alternatives there are in Iraq to either "staying the course" or "cutting-and-running," Chasing Ghosts is an uncensored and unrehearsed statement from a war veteran, providing a candid grunt's-eye view of the harrowing, bloody battles on the streets of Baghdad-and a patriot's vision of where America has gone wrong and how it can reset its path.

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