General Franks, leader of US invasion of Iraq, releases memoir

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2004

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Retired army general Tommy Franks, who led the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, released his memoirs this week, documenting, among other things, his surprise that Baghdad did not use weapons of mass destruction.

The 590-page tome, "American Soldier," opens with Franks's childhood in Oklahoma and follows his 37-year military career, up to his retirement last summer. The book offers no major bombshells but gives an eyewitness account of the US war on terrorism from the former head of the US Central Command.

He said his greatest surprise was that, in the early part of the war, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime did not use weapons of mass destruction. The United States had based its case for going to war on claims that Iraq was...