Desert Warrior. A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander

I was very surprised and pleased when I first read this book. It is not simply "the Saudi view of Desert Storm" but also an interesting biography of one man in Saudi society and how that society functions. Parts of it were a revelation to me. Many things that I had read or saw myself while in Saudi Arabia made sense when put in the context provided by the General. Parts of the book also made sense of some of the events of Desert Storm. A pretty good book in its own right.

I found this to be an immensely readable account of Desert Storm from the Saudi point of view, ... I was prepared for an egotistical, ham-handed account of how the Saudis won the war, with a little back up from other friendly countries-what I found was a far more balanced and perceptive accounting by a man who-even taken cum grano salis-performed an immensely difficult task. Yes, there was apple polishing on his own behalf, but I would encourage readers who may be tempted to snipe at the Saudi version of this story to question how Ameri-centric our own versions of Desert Storm are. Keep in mind that while we defeated Saddam militarily in six weeks of bombing and 100 hours of ground combat (I will leave it to others to debate who won the peace), the coalition did so only after six months of build up that without the considerable Saudi infrastructure-and checkbook-would have taken much longer.Yes, he does go into great detail about his efforts to remain-at least in terms of protocol-on par with Schwarzkopf (no easy task, given his personality!) but I never got the sense that Khaled believed it was for anything more than show-even as he acknowledged that the show was important. All the world was watching, and Saudi Arabia was in a difficult position in both living up to its self-appointed role as crucible of the Muslim world and requiring military help from a country that couldn't be more different from S.A. In fact, Khaled should be commended for his perceptiveness of just how important politics and show would be in this, the first war of the 10-minute news cycle, information age. For anyone who wants to understand Desert Storm, I would recommend first reading "The General's War," by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, then reading this book. I found reading each account of the Battle of Khafji side by side fascinating for each account's spin on facts.