On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003-January 2005 - Softcover

Wright, Donald P; Reese, Timothy R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907521887 ISBN 13: 9781907521881

Publisher: Military Bookshop, 2010

Synopsis

"On Point II" is the US Army's first historical study of Operation Iraqi Freedom between May 2003 and January 2005. The authors of this study, historians at the Army's Combat Studies Institute, have based their account on primary documents and hundreds of interviews with key participants in the campaign. On Point II tells the dramatic story of how, after May 2003, the US Army reinvented itself by transforming into an organization capable of conducting a broad array of diverse and complex “full spectrum operations” to create stability in Iraq. Critical chapters in this comprehensive book focus on detainee operations (including the Abu Ghraib incidents), reconstruction efforts, and the general response to the growing insurgency in Iraq. The study uses maps, charts, and photographs to help tell its story and includes appendices that document the units involved in the campaign and key events during this period of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Originally published by the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Combat Studies Institute in December 2008.

About this title

About the Author:

About the authors:   Dr. Donald P. Wright holds a Ph.D. in History from Tulane University and has served as a historian in the Combat Studies Institute since 2003. Wright has also served as an officer in both the active and reserve components of the US Army.   Colonel Timothy R. Reese is an Armor officer and Army historian. He was commissioned in 1981 from the U.S. Military Academy and has held a variety of command and staff positions in the United States, Germany, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Colonel Reese holds a Masters of History from the University of Michigan and a Masters of National Security Studies from the US Army War College. He has been the director of the Combat Studies Institute since 2005.  

Review:

Sunday, June 29,2008 New York Times article "Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History " by Michael R. Gordon Excerpt:       "The story of the American occupation of Iraq has been the subject of numerous books, studies and memoirs. But now the Army has waded into the highly charged  debate with its own nearly 700-page account: "On Point II: Transistion to the New Campaign."      The unclassified study, the second volume in a continuing history of the Iraq conflict, is as notworthy for who prepared it as for what it says.  In essence, the study is an attempt by the Army to tell the story of one of the most contentious periods in its history to military experts --and to itself."  

Sunday, June 29, 2008 Washington Post article, "Army's History of Iraq After Hussein Faults Pentagon" by Josh White Excerpt:      "The study, "On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign, " is an unclassified and unhindered look at U.S. Army operations in Iraq from May 2003 to January 2005.  That critical era of the war has drawn widespread criticism because of a failure to anticipate the the rise of an Iraqi insurgency and because policymakers provided too few U.S. troops and no stratetgy to maintain order after Iraq's decades-old regime was overthrown.        Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese, who authored the report along with the Army's Contemporary Operations Study Team, conclude that U.S. commanders and civillian leaders were too focused on only the military victory and lacked a realistic vision of what Iraq would look like following that triumph."

About this edition

• Publisher: Military Bookshop
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1907521887
• ISBN 13: 9781907521881
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 718