Publisher's Synopsis
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. An estimated 151,000 to 1,033,000 Iraqis were killed in the first three to four years of conflict. US troops were officially withdrawn in 2011. The U.S. became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition; the insurgency and many dimensions of the armed conflict continue. The invasion occurred as part of the George W. Bush administration's War on Terror following the September 11 attacks despite no connection of the latter to Iraq.
Squinting from a one-two punch of exhaustion and the eerie faded-brass hue of a desert sun that doesn't take breaks and never seems to want to, I'm trying to decide just how in the hell I ended up here. Here, being Iraq. Cavalry Scout. In the Army for that matter. Perhaps if I thought long and hard enough I could remember. I knew for damn sure that I had no shortage of time to work it out.
My journey started six thousand miles to the west in a place called Ashtabula, Ohio. I had spent the better part of a year at a 3rd shift job in a factory on the far end of town, trying not to lose myself in the mullets and meth of the American Midwest. Then came 9/11. The images of those airplanes slamming into the NYC skyline like lawn darts playing on a constant loop on CNN. The attack had leaned me a sense of purpose; I enlisted in the Army. Now here I was two years later, as far from Ashtabula as I could get, squinting in the dust and that godforsaken insane-colored sun.....
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