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Product Description
Special Forces soldiers are brave, seasoned soldiers from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know the language, culture and rules of unconventional warfare better than anyone, including the CIA. They prefer to stay out of the limelight, but author Linda Robinson has found a way inside their special brotherhood and gained their trust. In Masters of Chaos, she tells their story through the experiences of a select group of commandos whose careers and missions exemplify heroism and mystique. Meet Rawhide, Colonel Charlie, Colonel Kevin, Captain Z, Wildman, Warren and Pete-and be grateful they are on your side. Robinson follows the Forces from their post-Vietnam resurrection through Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans, and culminates with their recent trials and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq, she was the only reporter in the western desert to witness the eight-hour firefights of the war's opening days. The blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam hideout on the Iranian border-by a single twelve-man Special Forces team-has never been told before, nor has anyone revealed in such depth the evidence of its use by Al Qaeda and other terrorists. The most comprehensive account ever of the Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with riveting, intimate detail in the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all.
Amazon.com Review
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have given the U.S. Army's Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, a central role in American military action like never before. Several hundred U.S. Special Forces operators helped a motley band of Afghan rebels orchestrate a stunning rout when they overthrew the Taliban after 9/11. In Iraq, as journalist Linda Robinson explains in Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces, Special Forces units were the main U.S. elements on the ground in the northern and western regions of the country, where they defeated government forces that outnumbered them many times over. Robinson tells the story of the Special Forces through the eyes of a few of its more colorful personalities, men with call signs like Rawhide and Killer. She follows them around the world from Panama and El Salvador to Somalia, Kosovo, and, finally, Afghanistan and Iraq. Surprisingly, however, she devotes only a few pages to the Green Beret-led victory in Afghanistan, even though it was arguably their greatest achievement since they were created after World War II.
Critics and supporters of the recent American interventions alike should find the technical proficiency of the Special Forces interesting and impressive. Each 12-soldier team may marshal more than a century of combined experience in weapons, foreign languages, intelligence, communications, air control, and trauma medicine. For a book about such an action-packed subject, though, Robinson's effort is somewhat dry, and she devotes more time to mundane background biographies than to the dramatic battle scenes in which the Special Forces invariably find themselves. In addition, Robinson's "secret history" is an authorized and sympathetic one, and readers may be left wondering what she may have left out of her accounts in order to maintain her access. --Alex Roslin
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