A General Speaks Out or Every Man A Tiger

A General Speaks Out: The Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Author: Michael DeLong

Lt. General Mike DeLong, deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, was second only to General Tommy Franks in conducting the war on terror. From his vantage point at the center of discussions between President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Tommy Franks, General DeLong offers the frankest and most authoritative look yet inside the wars--how we prepared for battle, how we fought, how we toppled two regimes--and what is happening now on these two crucial fronts. His eye-opening account provides a much-needed insider's view of what's gone right, what's gone wrong, and what we need to do to succeed in this ever more perilous enterprise. This is a paperback edition of Inside Centcom (ISBN 0895260204) published by Regnery Publishing.

Table of Contents:

CONTENTS

Introduction by General Tony Zinni xi

Author’s Note xiii

Prologue xv

CHAPTER ONE Welcome to CentCom 1

CHAPTER TWO September 11 17

CHAPTER THREE The War in Afghanistan 37

CHAPTER FOUR Building to H-Hour 63

CHAPTER FIVE Iraq 97

CHAPTER SIX Iraq: The Aftermath 123

Appendix A: Statement by General Tommy Franks before the House Armed Services Committee 141

Appendix B: Maps 157

Appendix C: The National Security Strategy of the United States ???

Appendix D: The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction ???

Appendix E: Op-Ed Columns ???

Acknowledgments 209

About the Authors 211

Index 213

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Every Man A Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

Author: Tom Clancy

The controversial Gulf War air campaign is revealed in rich, provocative detail. And in this new edition, General Horner looks at the current Gulf conflict--and comments on the use of air power in Iraq today.

Greg Sewell

Chuck Horner is dead. He died in 1962 on a routine training exercise in the Libyan desert.

At least, that's the way he tells it.

In fact, Chuck Horner is alive and well and living in Florida. What happened in the North African desert is something he can only explain as a miracle. His fighter was pointing nose down, diving toward the sand, and the controls were not responding. Just feet above the ground, against the laws of physics and counter to his training, one last maneuver pulled him out of his dive. Upside down and with the tail inches above the sand, Horner righted the plane and flew home. "Every day of my life after that event has been a gift," he says. "I was killed in the desert in North Africa. I'm dead."

Horner thanks God for pulling him out of that dive. Readers who enjoy the inside story of modern military strategy and combat might feel some gratitude as well, because if the desert has claimed Lieutenant Chuck Horner 37 years ago, we would not today have General Chuck Horner (Ret.), whose stellar career has seen him serve as commander of the Ninth Air Force, commander of the U.S. Central Command Air Forces, and most relevant to Every Man a Tiger , the man in charge of allied air power in the Gulf War.

The story of Horner's survival in the desert and the rich details of his successful command in the Persian Gulf, recounted by Tom Clancy in Every Man a Tiger , are all told with the same skill and craft that Clancy brings to his bestselling fiction. The two men are an impressive team: Horner provides the facts, and Clancy re-creates the drama.

Clancy does the bulk of the storytelling, but in passages scattered throughout the book and ranging in length from a few lines to several pages, he steps back and lets Horner tell the story in his own words. Clancy knows that it was Horner who made life-and-death decisions in the Gulf War, and he knows that Horner's firm and straightforward prose can best reveal the starkness of command and command decisions.

Neither author wades very deeply into the geopolitics of the war, leaving that work to pundits, journalists, and historians. But drawing on Horner's decades of experience, the two do delve into the lessons learned in the war, and look particularly at the efforts made to build and maintain the broad coalition of nations that opposed Saddam Hussein in 1990 and 1991.

Because this is not fiction, where character and plot outrank historical accuracy, and because Clancy is a self-confessed military buff, Every Man a Tiger is rich with explanations of strategy, organizational details, and enough technical militaryspeak to make a reader feel like he is in the command bunker.

--Greg Sewell

Chicago Tribune

Mesmerizing...every bit as entertaining as Clancy spinning a made-up yarn on his own.

KLIATT

Best-selling author Clancy demonstrates again that he is a skilled writer who handles nonfiction as adroitly as he does fiction. This frank and honest collaborative discussion of the Persian Gulf air war will receive a great deal of attention from future history majors and students of war as well as from his legion of fans. This book would be beneficial to anyone considering a career in the U.S. Air Force, especially ROTC candidates. No one will be disappointed with this interesting, well-written, carefully researched examination of the evolution of the USAF over the past 40 years that resulted in a victory in the skies over Iraq in 1991. Chuck Horner's career is used as a kind of timeline to examine (and sometimes take to task) decisions, policies, and tactics that failed or, at least, impeded the progress of the mission of the USAF over the past four decades. The bibliography provides a mix of obtainable books (for further reading/research) and scholarly efforts (for authenticity). Photographs, maps, and a detailed index are additional assets. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Berkley, 564p, 23cm, $16.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: John E. Boyd; Professor (retired), Manor Jr. College, Jenkintown, PA, September 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 5)

Library Journal

Clancy takes a look at war with the commander of U.S. allied air assets during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Kirkus Reviews

Bestselling novelist and nonfiction military author Clancy (A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier, 1999, etc.) partners with Horner, a Vietnam fighter pilot who rose to general and commander of the Desert Storm air offensive, to narrate the Gulf War from the top commanders' vantage point. The duo portray an air-warrior culture shaped by the perennial possibility of death, whether in the exacting training or in combat. Horner describes the strange rules of engagement dictated to the military in Vietnam from LBJ's far-off Washington, where politicians often bypassed the advice of military leaders in a policy of "Graduated Pressure" that prolonged the war and caused casualties to mount. Clancy credits young Vietnam-era officers like Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Horner with correcting the mistakes of that war by reforming the Army and Air Force while building the greatest, most effective armed forces in history. The result was a quick victory with few casualties over Iraq's huge army. Readers get a detailed description of the air offensive and the victory in Kuwait and Iraq of a successful coalition of Arab, European, and American ground troops. There are snapshots of Schwarzkopf (the short fused, perfectionist Commander-in-Chief, who could not bear the agony of losing any of his beloved ground troops), Powell, President Bush, Secretary Cheney, and the Arab high commanders. Horner discusses the philosophy of command and finds that the war was necessary to stop the stealing of vital oil supplies and the murder, rape, and torture inflicted by Iraqi troops on the people of Kuwait. Despite the bravery of soldiers in a just cause, war is still a hateful course of action and should beused as a policy of last resort, Horner declares. An absorbing, detailed, and useful study of soldiers under stress and deadly events that tested their courage, determination and efficiency. (First printing of 500,000, Book-of-the-Month Club main selection, $500,000 ad/promo)