Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians | 
 enlarge | Authors: Chris Hedges, Laila Al-arian
Publisher: Nation Books
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 94722
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7
ISBN: 1568583737
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.704431
EAN: 9781568583730
ASIN: 1568583737
Publication Date: June 2, 2008
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Product Description
Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian spent the past year interviewing over fifty veterans to expose the patterns of the occupation in Iraq. The testimonies of these soldiers?many of who remain deeply traumatized by their experiences?uncover how the very conduct of the war and occupation have turned the American forces into agents of terror for most Iraqis. Collateral Damage is organized around key military operations?Convoys, Checkpoints, Detentions, Raids, Suppressive Fire, and “Hearts and Minds.” Military convoys traveling at tremendous speeds through towns have become trains of death. Civilians are routinely run over or shot to death. Soldiers fire upon Iraqi vehicles with impunity at checkpoints. Late-night detentions based on shoddy intelligence terrify women, traumatize children, and radicalize the young men caught in their dragnet. These soldiers have found the moral courage to speak out about the true nature of a war that has become one long, unchecked atrocity, and has given rise to the instability, sectarian violence and chaos that we witness today in Iraq.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Must reading for every American citizen July 22, 2008
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book deals in the ugly civilian deaths in Iraq which resulted from our invasion. The authors, who are scholars, carefully document their work. They honestly present the viewpoint of the American soldier and the Iraqi citizen. It becomes clear in the course of their treatise that while civilian deaths may be inevitable (that alone should be a powerful deterrent to invading a country!), in Iraq bad military planning and preparation and a lack of concern for the civilian population we are supposed to be serving have made the situation much, much worse. I came away feeling some empathy with the troops, fury at the military leadership, and much sadness for the Iraqis.
 A Trivial Screed July 18, 2008
3 out of 23 found this review helpful
The authors get it right -- but so what? Their "insights" are within the reach of an intermittent viewer of the nightly news. Their analysis could be easily compressed into a paragraph or two. Reminds me of an unedited freshman term paper written during an all-nighter --or worse-- a pulpit jeremiad.
America bashing July 3, 2008
8 out of 35 found this review helpful
Everyone knows that war is horrific, and that terrible, unjust acts are sometimes committed by individual soldiers in theater. It is also widely known and understood that the experience of war often has a tremendously traumatic effect on those soldiers participating in it. However, this book seeks to portray American soldiers in entirety as unstable mad dogs who, because of their own pain and confusion, become mass murderers and sadistic oppressive brutes. In my opinion this book is just a return to the "baby killer" name calling of American soldiers that took place during and after Vietnam. It is just that now it is wrapped in a prettier package to draw direct responsibility away from the soldier and apply it to America itself, the message of the sadistic mad dog brute that is the American soldier is still the same in the end though.
Poweful and insightful. June 26, 2008
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
This book divided into 4 parts, (checkpoints, raids, convoys and detentions) gives you a daily life front row seat for what it's really like in Iraq. I kept lowering the book and saying to myself "We'll never be able to make it up to them. NEVER". (Soldiers and civilians). Can you imagine being innocent and no one understands what you're saying? Not able to stop the car at a check point because the brakes don't work? Having your dog shot in front of you? Having your friends killed because they couldn't avoid a convoy? This book gives you many accounts on what it's really like over there. I highly recommend it.
Shows the reader mentally, emotionally and physically the pathology of war. June 24, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
This book really shows how true evil masks itself behind such high sounding words as `honor,' `glory,' `dignity', `patriotism', `for god and country', 'victory', and so on; words that may have inspired a young man or woman to join the military (although many others may do so for other reasons such as economic necessity) only for many of them to later find that they have been duped and diabolically deceived by those so called `responsible' politicians who had sent them over there along with those other cowardly politicians who only pretend that they want them to come back home.
It's only too late when these young soldiers realize that they are simply the tools of a greedy power elite who only seek profit from human butchery, slaughter and misery and these people could care less about the Iraqi people or for that matter, they could care less about the American soldiers who are used as sacrificial cannon fodder to serve some sick pathological agenda to `occupy' (read: conquer and rape) another culture. In fact, it's even beyond sick as to what goes on in Iraq. It's just plain evil.
By reading the personal testimonial accounts of those soldiers who have been deeply traumatized from their experiences in Iraq, this book really gives the reader a feel for the reality of the horrors of war. The accounts given by the soldiers regarding their experiences traveling in the moving convoys is simply horrific and it's clearly a living nightmarish hell for not only the unfortunate innocent Iraqi's who are butchered from these convoys but for the American soldiers themselves who actually think that they are fighting for some greater `cause.' Any politician that can read about the things that go on over in Iraq and not be so deeply affected as to immediately put an end to this campaign of terror is simply not human.
This is an excellent book and it does what it's supposed to do, which is to bring awareness to the reader; mentally, emotionally and physically, of the pathology of war.
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