So You Think You Know All about the War on Terror?

HORSE SOLDIERS:
The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan
By Doug Stanton
416 pp. Scribner $28
Reviewed by Carter Jefferson

After 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted action—fast. And he got it. Between mid-October and mid-December 2001, some 300 CIA agents and U.S. Special Forces soldiers, working with Afghan warlords, nearly annihilated the Taliban forces that had helped Al Qaeda prepare the attacks on New York and Washington. Doug Stanton’s book, published last month and already a bestseller, tells the story in great detail.

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