The American soldier is why General David Petraeus's brilliant strategy of moving soldiers off isolated bases and out among the Iraqi people worked. Worked to find and kill terrorists, reclaim neighborhoods and help lead Iraq to democracy. Iraqis respect strength. They saw that American soldiers are great-hearted warriors who rejoice in killing Al Qaeda terror gangs that took over whole cities, raped too many women and boys, cut off too many heads. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier rebuilding a clinic, school or neighborhood. They learned from the American soldier that the most dangerous man in the world could be the best man too. - Follow the great Deuce Four battalion that became the center of a warrior cult dreaded by terrorists and revered by Iraqis. - Read about an elite Iraqi SWAT team taking down a terror cell for the murder of four American soldiers and a brave Iraqi guide. - Occupiers, not liberators? Tell that to the wounded Iraqi interpreter, who, convinced he was about to die, begged his U.S. commander to have his heart cut out and buried in America.

Michael Yon (born 1964) is an American writer and photographer. He served in the Special Forces in the early-1980s, one of the youngest soldiers to pass the Green Beret selection process, and he became a general freelance writer in the mid-1990s. He focused on military writing after the invasion of Iraq. Yon has been embedded on numerous occasions with American and British troops in Iraq, most prominently a deployment with the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four) of the 25th Infantry Division in Mosul, Iraq that ended in September 2005.