The Command: Deep Inside The President's Secret Army

If you’re looking for thrilling tales of bravery and action, this is not your book. If you want a sober, factual account of one of the most secretive and significant elements in the US government today and the Global War on Terror, read on.

Ambinder uses his unparalleled access to JSOC personnel to explain how JSOC pioneered a fast and lethal combination of intelligence and action that broke the back of the insurgency in Iraq and led to the death of Osama bin Laden. Delta Force and the Navy SEALS are among the success stories, adapting quickly to collect intelligence, share it across agencies and units, and use it to roll up terrorist networks. But beyond the Middle East, JSOC operators have conducted missions in China, Peru, and Africa.

Ambinder is perhaps a little too favorable to JSOC, and minimizes the contributions of conventional forces and the CIA. He also believes that JSOC operations are legal, and that the people responsible for torturing detainees in 2003 and 2004 have been appropriately punished (yeah, right). But that aside, this is about as objective as anybody is going to get on America’s shadow military force.