Twice Armed: An American Soldier's Battle for Hearts and Minds in Iraq (Hardcover)

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
He was a different kind of warrior for a different kind of war. Lieutenant Colonel R. Alan King and his 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion became operations central after the collapse of the Iraqi army and the beginning of the occupation. While under his command these civil affairs and psychological operations soldiers were not content to stay in secure offices inside the green zone. To do their job they had to get out and make house calls and in the process the 422nd became the most highly decorated civil affairs unit in the history of the U.S. Army with twenty-one individual awards for valor and five purple heartsR. Alan King was particularly well suited for the new kind of war being waged in Iraq. Armed with his rifle and a Palm Pilot that contained an English translation of the Koran along with an informed and nuanced respect for Middle Eastern culture, King captured or arranged the surrender of almost a dozen of the most-wanted villains from Saddam's regime including several from the famous deck of cards. He became privy to secrets as weighty as those of Iraq's nuclear weapons program and as light as those behind the outlandish press briefings of the infamous Baghdad Bob.The regional expertise that helped King negotiate with clerics and sheikhs also informs his provocative opinions about what it will take to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq, an ancient, mystifying, and deeply religious culture. King has been compared to the legendary T. E. Lawrence, with the press dubbing him Alan of Arabia. Reading Twice Armed shows it to be an apt comparison.
Amazon