Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

After reading this book, I was glad that I saved the old copies of Newsweek and Time magazines that covered the deaths of Saddam's sons and captured of Saddam himself. These old news magazines had far greater details on those subjects then this book.

What does this book contained? Mostly selective special forces operations in Iraq that may be indirectly links to Saddam. These stories were well told and nicely written by an author who obviously enjoyed telling it. However, the author seem to put a rush job on the book since some of the writing seem to be bit hasty, if not little sloppy for a person of author's experiences. Also, the book have very little to do with the title and details about Saddam's capture proves to be weak and uninformative since it been told in greater details already by news magazines.

If the book were ever to be rerelease some day, I hope it comes out with a different title instead of the misleading one that it has right now.

Had I read the reviews for this book I never would have bought it, but I liked his last book, so I took a chance. As other reviews mention my frustration level grew with every page and exponentially with every completely unrelated chapter. This book is called "Hunting Down Saddam" yet it spends very little time on that topic, instead it spends time on unrelated topics. At times it seems off-track chapters were added for no better reason then to give the book more pages. If you want info on Special Forces in the Iraq War I suggest you look elsewhere.

Stay away from this book.

It's hard to imagine a book being flowery and dry at the same time, but Hunting Down Saddam is just that. Missing are first hand accounts, details, personal stories, anything that could liven the text and make interesting events, interesting; instead we get lines like, "The SF medics dressed wounds, water was chugged, and faces were stuffed. All this fighting burned calories!" Yep, that's about as detailed and interesting as this book gets.

Honestly, I think anyone with an enthusiast knowledge of Special Operations, who watched CNN, could crank out propaganda superior to Hunting Down Saddam. Robin Moore takes us for a ride, but it's not to war.

I bought this book in the discounted area of a bookstore while on leave from work and now I know why. A lot of what is in the book is overly vague and generalised, and the rest is not written by the author at all (a diary from a news reporter and letters home from an American officer).

I quite liked the letters home from the American officer (if they hadn't been in the book I'd have given it only one star), but I don't see how anyone can publish a book with so little of their own content and still claim to be the author.

Apparently KBR treated the author really well, but what do I care - I wanted the story promised in the title, but got less than what I can read in the newspapers. If someone wants to write a book about private contractors in Iraq then do that and give it an appropriate title.

SF actions have to be vague on occasion to protect information or sources, but I could have written this myself, and I bet you could have too.

I will have to agree with the rest of the reviews on this book. I am an OIF vet and was with one of the units mentioned in this book. Yes, I did take part in the capture of Saddam. Therefore, I was very surprised with some of the inaccuracies. The author has put out some good stuff in the past but I must admit that I was quite unimpressed here. If you are interested in the hunt and capture of Saddam, there is a DVD documentary out called ACE IN THE HOLE put out by the Military Channel. It's a good source and has some scenes of the raid...and I'M even in it. Ha,ha. Seriously though, save your money and get the video instead.

Like many of my fellow Special Forces officers, I "grew up" on Robin Moore's The Green Berets. I was excited to see his latest offering on the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, this book is a disjointed collection of Moore's travel diary combined with more substantive offerings from the diaries of officers and FOX News correspondants. Its really an old man's tour down memory lane courtesy of some fine American (and Coalition) warriors.

While I commend Mr. Moore on his book's patriotic portrayals of the brave men and women engaged in battle, I recommend that readers look elsewhere for detailed or meaningful accounts of what the U.S. Armed Forces are doing in Iraq. The book's hodgepodge collection of anecdotes leaps willy-nilly about Iraq. The reason that this book is so disjointed is that Mr. Moore depends on a collection of other authors' writings to make his book.

We read about the magnificent warriors of the 101st Airborne and the 4th Infantry Division (as well as Moore's buddies at Kellog Brown and Root), but the accounts are a haphazard collection of diary entries from unit officers and Fox News correspondants. There is even a small chapter dedicated to Desert One, the failed raid in Iran (what the heck does that have to do with capturing Saddam?). Moore's contribution appears to be limited to a few comments on how tough it is for an older gentlemen to move about Iraq. Our hat is off to you sir, but we want to read about the war, not your daily traveling arrangements!

Too bad Mr. Moore didn't stick with the format of his classic. I believe that a man of his stature has unprecedented access to the Special Operations community - access that should give him more than enough material for a truly engaging read about what our soldiers are doing in Iraq. Buy this one if you want to support a classic's author, skip it and look for something better if you want a good read on Iraq.

I'm sort of middle of the road. Almost didn't buy it when I saw Doris Kerns Goodwin (the woman involved in plagerism of a past book) reviewed it with such raves. But I did, and finished it just a hour ago. Gotta say, I agree with some of the other comments here, it is hard to believe Robin Moore wrote this, or that any real special ops forces were interviewed. I was a little misled by the Imus quote on Amazon, apparently Imus never said that about this book- I'm pretty sure he said it about the previous bin laden Afghanistan book. which sort of makes me think Amazon ought to give me my money back.

If want to read about day to day drudgery and old news reports and letters home, buy it. If you want to read about the war, get 21 Days to Baghdad, or Boots on the Ground, which were excellant.

This is just a rehash of what we already saw on CNN and FOX and literally no insight on what special ops did there, or how they are even set up there. The part about special ops in the north is all based on; "according to one operator," "as rumor has it," "as one SF soldier said," etc, etc. Moore needs to go back and interview some real guys and write it first hand. The half developed comparisions to Mad Max movies, the constant drone of name dropping of his "writing assistant," his "buddy" who dialed his satellite phone for him, the a**kissing of hollywood types in the hopes of getting invited to an a-list party, his reminiscing, etc, etc, gets old quick.

Moore writes moore about his friends that helped him, then he does about the soldiers that fought. If this book was really the inside story, a green beret who actually fought and shot a gun in Iraq would have written the forward, instead of some retired guy working in an office in baghdad.

Trust me, in spite of the advertising, this isn't The Green Berets, or The Hunt For Bin Laden, or Black Hawk Down, this is grist for the mill, and a boring mill at that. In a way, I sort of feel conned.