Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture [Hardcover]

Robin Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0312329164 | ISBN-13: 978-0312329167 | Edition: 1st

This authoritative and gripping narrative plunges the American public into the real and personal story of the United States forces in Iraq, and their successful maneuvers in capturing one of the most vicious dictators of our time.

Hunting Down Saddam contains up-to-the-minute material and provides never-before-heard accounts of the triumphs and frustrations, strategies and attacks, of those who put their lives at risk to track down Saddam Hussein.

* The first book to tell the whole story of the pursuit of Saddam, from pre-war to his capture.

* Candid accounts straight from the soldiers on the frontline, which have not been sanitized or filtered through the media, the military, or the Pentagon.

* Exclusive interviews with key military leaders, including Colonel "Smokin' Joe" Anderson, Commanding Officer of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles), who led the attack on Saddam's sons.

The capture of Saddam Hussein is the defining event for this generation's military. Action-packed and controversial, Hunting Down Saddam teems with inside information. Robin Moore gets the real story from these fighting men as only he can.

Doris Kearns Goodwin calls Hunting Down Saddam, "A fast and furious read . . . when the historians try to put together the real facts of the two wars the U. S. has fought since September 11, 2001 this book will be a valuable contribution to their research."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The doughty author of The Green Berets and the instant-seeming The Hunt for Bin Laden gives us this jumbled but valuable set of accounts of crucial operations in the Iraq war. The focus is on Special Forces, to which the author remains loyal, given his background with them going back to the Vietnam War. Moore, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, went to Iraq last year, at the age of 78, and followed Task Force VIKING's (the military uses all caps when referring to such objective-oriented groups) work with the highly factionalized Kurdish armed forces, as well as Task Force DAGGER's infiltration of southern Iraq, neither much covered in the general media. Also unique to this book is the narrative of a 4th Infantry battalion's operations in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown and a center of continued Iraqi resistance, where American troops and their Iraqi allies accomplished a good deal of nation building, or at least peacekeeping, while taking casualties. The grand finale is, of course, Saddam's capture in a "spiderhole" outside Tikrit, where the story had to end in order to meet the publication deadline. This may have led to the slightly rushed feel of the prose, but the pro-military tone is expected from the author and his assistants and informants, most retired or serving military. Also rushed, but vivid, are portraits of those Americans who are still at the "sharp end" in Iraq, who deserve knowledgeable portrayals of and full credit for their dangerous work, which they receive here. This book adds to our knowledge of how Spec Ops have been integrated with regular units (with a high degree of success) in the last generation, and it will appeal to Moore's established audience and to serious students of Special Operations, along with most people interested in the Iraq war. The pressing topic should carry many readers over the book's awkward prose and fragmented structure.
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Review

"A fast and furious read . . . when the historians try to put together the real facts of the two wars the U. S. has fought since September 11, 2001 this book will be a valuable contribution to their research."
- Doris Kearns Goodwin

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (March 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312329164
• ISBN-13: 978-0312329167
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,991,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cheap propaganda under a deceptive title, May 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture (Hardcover)

Probably the worst book I have ever read.... A childish and propagandistic book of the worst literature, badly structured and poorly written. The title is the most disappointing, misleading and deceptive. I bought this book to know more about "the inside story of the search and capture of Saddam". The title (Hunting Down Saddam) led me to believe the book would concentrate on the concrete efforts to capture Saddam. However, the first reference to "the hunt for Saddam" is made after 209 extremely boring pages and the only chapter that actually focuses on Saddam's capture is the last one: from page 227 to 257. Besides the last chapter, which barely adds insight to the widely available journalistic information on the capture of Saddam, the rest of the book is a ridiculous attempt at glorifying the efforts of American soldiers. By childishly venerating the good American boys without analyzing the contradictions of war, this kind of literature only helps discrediting the work of good American soldiers. One last question: What does the author exactly mean in page 248 when he refers to "the interrogators turned up the heat and at 1700 hours, the source cracked"? Cheap propaganda under a deceptive title. Don't buy it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Keep on Hunting, October 23, 2004

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture (Hardcover)

I can honestly say that with each page of the book my disappointment level increased. I read this authors book on the war in Afghanistan and found that it did provide some interesting, if disjointed stories. I picked this book up expecting the same. To be fair, the author of the book really only wrote about a third of it. For the other two thirds of the book he used diary entries of a FOX news reporter and letters from a solider he befriended along the way. I would say that probably the best parts of the book are these sections although they really do not hold that much meat. What I was looking for was a book that detailed out the search and capture / death of Saddam's two son's and Saddam himself. To my disappointment, the two areas of the book that held the least amount of detail covered the very items I wanted to read about. What probably upsets me the most is that the book, through its title and dust jacket description, claim to have the story of these captures. Newspaper articles about the events held more information.

Even with the book providing the good old bait and switch on the Saddam clan adventures, if the remaining 230 pages would have held some detailed and interesting stories about the war in Iraq I probably would not be so disappointed. The fact is the rest of the book is a jumbled mess that has less clear direction then a toddler roaming around a park. The plain truth of the matter is that the author is 78 years old and he made mention a number of times that he had difficultly getting around. With this being the case, he had to rely on others to gather information and frankly they did not deliver. This author has made a carrier about the access that he was able to obtain through his connection to the soldiers and that is the one area he physically could not muster at this time in his life. All he had left to offer was his skills as a writer and ability to put the story together and in this regard he fell short.

Overall I was very disappointed with the book. The only reason that I am not giving the book a one star rating is that I feel a bit bad beating up on a 78 year old author with Parkinson's disease. There were also some vaguely interesting stories about the day to day life in Iraq told by a solider, but just not enough to make the book interesting. I would suggest you continuing looking if you are after the story of Saddam's capture or general fighting in Iraq. I know I will.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hunting Down Sadaam does not deliver, June 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture (Hardcover)

This book only rates opening for some coverage of Special Forces operations in the northern Iraq that have not yet been extensively covered. Otherwise, it is a poor effort. The writing style is amateurish. There are frequent glaring avoidable errors in military nomenclature(e.g. the non-existent Army rank of "Captain Sergeant-Major"). The long section entitled "Letters from Tikrit" is dull as can be, written in an awkward style by an Army Lt. Col. who seems unable to express himself in anything but cliches and military jargon. The book does little to give the reader the feel of the action described. The descriptions all seem fourth-hand and as if written by someone far away from the scene long after the event. The book seems little organized. It does not seem to have direction, but rather it seems to be some disparate collection of pieces written by different people at different times and crudely tacked together to get something into the book stores. A quick glance at Robin Moore's previous book "the Hunt for Bin Laden" will reveal the stunning decline in workmanship that his book represents.