M. C. Armstrong secured his embed as a journalist with the Navy
SEALs in 2008. Shortly before he left for Iraq his father asked him
to tell the story no one else seemed to be telling, the story of
the people sometimes constructed as our friends and other times our
enemies: the Iraqis. "But what about them?" he asked. "Who's their
good guy? Who's their George Washington? That's the story you want
to find. Talk to them." Armstrong's searing memories about his
relationship with his father, his fiancé, and his SEAL team
companion take the reader on a nosedive ride from a historically
black college in the American South straight into Baghdad, the burn
pits, and the desert beyond the mysterious Haditha dam. Culminating
in the disclosure of a devastating secret, The Mysteries of Haditha
explores the lengths Armstrong was willing to go to prove himself
and to witness a truth he couldn't have prepared himself to
receive. At once daring, dark, and hilarious, this memoir of
M. C. Armstrong's journey pulls no punches and lifts the veil
on the lies we tell each other and the ones we tell ourselves. The
Mysteries of Haditha is a coming-of-age story and an unprecedented
glimpse into the heart of the war on terror.