Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War Inside Iraq

What is the point of even having an intelligence service, since no one is listening to the field intelligence This rhetorical question from former CIA officer Charles Sam Faddis is one of two themes of Operation Hotel California, an account of the CIA-U.S. Special Forces teams in Iraqi Kurdistan in advance of the opening of the Iraq War in 2003. The other theme is that these teams and their Kurdish counterparts amassed an impressive record, something most works on the war have missed. Tucker is author of several books on the conflict, including Among Warriors in Iraq True Grit, Special Ops, and Raiding in Mosul and Fallujah The Lyons Press, 2005 and RONIN A Marine ScoutSniper Platoon in Iraq Stackpole Books, 2008. Faddis was the leader of the CIA team that went into Iraq in the summer of 2002, 8 months before the U.S. military entered in force. In addition to providing insight into a little-known aspect of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, the book weighs in on current debates about wartime intelligence. These debates tend to focus on the efficacy of the Intelligence Community, but this book shows that also worthy of consideration is the extent to which the strategists and policy makers are willing to listen. Operation Hotel California The Clandestine War Inside Iraq, by Mike Tucker and Charles Faddis. Guilford, CT The Lyons Press, 2009, 216 pp., index.