See all blog entries by Bing West.

Francis J. 'Bing' West is a Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan administration. In Vietnam, he was a member of the Marine Force Recon team that initiated Operation Stingray - sustained attacks behind enemy lines. He also saw action in the villages with a Combined Action Platoon and wrote The Village, a narrative of a Marine squad that lived for 485 days in a Vietnamese village. During the Vietnam time period, he wrote a series of monographs for The Rand Corporation on counterinsurgency and the nature of small unit combat.

West is also the author of Small Unit Action in Vietnam, Naval Forces and National Security, The Pepperdogs: A Novel, The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division and No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah. He is working on a third book about the insurgency in Iraq.

West is the recipient of Marine Corps Heritage Award for nonfiction, the Colby Military History Award and the VFW National Media Award. The Los Angeles Times named him "one of the top ten journalists covering Iraq". His articles appear in The Wall St. Journal, The New York Times, the National Review, MSNBC, and Slate.com. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Middle East Institute, the Military Order of the Carabao and the Infantry Order of St. Crispin. He appears frequently on C-SPAN and The News Hour. He can be reached at bing@westwrite.com. His company web site: www.gamacorp.com; his writing web site is www.westwrite.com.