Sweet Success for Tom Mowle

Published May 14, 2026

Congratulations to Tom Mowle! His nonfiction Iraq War book, CHAOS IN THE GREEN ZONE: MY TIME AS AN IRAQ WAR STRATEGIST, recently released from the University Press of Kansas. He will celebrate with a book signing on July 11th at Barnes and Noble Briargate in Colorado Springs.

ABOUT THE BOOK:  An American officer offers an explosive memoir from inside coalition headquarters in Baghdad. With raw honesty and exhilarating detail, Tom Mowle shares how policy and strategy were built at a time when it still felt like the US could win the Iraq War.

Mowle vividly depicts the frenetic cycle of activity at a wartime forward headquarters, where the enemy often dictated the schedule of events, fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Important tasks were set aside for urgent distractions; hard deadlines constrained critical thinking and well-balanced decisions. Frequent indirect fire attacks, the deaths of colleagues, heat-induced illnesses, and personality conflicts thickened the fog of war.

Amid this chaos in an unfamiliar land, Tom wrestled with deeply human issues, including his troubled marriage, his daughter’s health, and his own career prospects. Through it all, he sought to find meaning through service despite creeping skepticism about the mission at hand. Purchase a copy through Amazon, Bookshop, or from your favorite bookseller.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom Mowle deployed from the Air Force Academy to coalition headquarters in Baghdad from August to December 2004. He served in the policy and strategy divisions and helped shape senior officers’ understandings of the situation. After retiring from the Air Force in 2008, he received a gubernatorial appointment to be El Paso County Public Trustee. In that capacity, his office handled all foreclosures in the state’s most populous county. In 2019, he retired from his county position to devote time to his business, Rampart Professional Solutions, where he serves as an academic writing and research coach and editor. Follow the author on X, Bluesky, and Linkedin.