military history tagged posts

Don Cook was a young Marine Corps Captain, stationed on Okinawa but on a 90-day temporary duty assignment in South Vietnam when he was captured by the Viet Cong near the town of Binh Gia. From his capture on December 31, 1964, to his death on or about December 8, 1967, Cook was held in a number of primitive prisoner of war (POW) camps in South Vietnam. He and his fellow POWs, mostly Army officers and enlisted soldiers and one US government civilian suffered mental, emotional, and some physical abuse, near-starvation diets, minimal medical care despite the ravages of many tropical diseases, and exposure to the elements.

Through it all, Cook held himself to the highest standards of moral, professional, and personal conduct, often placing the health and welfare of his fellow POWs ...

Let’s get this clear from the start: this book is not a history of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and of Operation Desert Storm. Oh, superficially it is, but far better ones have been written.

Second, while the subtitle of the book is, “Honoring the Veterans of Desert Storm,” it does not honor, or even much mention the tens of thousands of Airmen, especially from the U.S. Air Force, who crushed the Iraqi Air Force in days, crushed many of the Iraqi Republican Guards ground forces, even during the middle of a historic sandstorm, and who in general made the famed 100-hour ground war possible.

Third, potential readers should know who sponsored and paid for this book: six of the seven sponsors are either wealthy Kuwaitis or the Kuwaiti Royals, the al-Sabah family...