It's debatable whether America's disastrous involvement in Somalia was one of the last lingering mistakes of the Bush administration or one of the earliest of the Clinton administration. In either case, it's difficult to go back and justify the presence of American troops scouring the streets of Mogadishu fruitlessly searching for elusive Somali warlords. Coming off an easy Gulf War victory, the U.S. military was riding high on its technological might and seemingly seamless strategies. But no amount of training and no level of weaponry could prepare the troops for the chaos of Mogadishu. Every male citizen of every age seemed to have been armed with a gun or grenade launcher, and women and children were regularly wielded as human shields. Somali men chewed khat, a mild amphetamine that gave them a wild look in their eyes, and crowds spontaneously set up makeshift roadblocks to slow down vehicles. Most disturbing, Somali citizens seemed to be attracted, rather than repelled, by the sound of gunfire. As indicated by the subjects interviewed by journalist Mark Bowden for his eye-opening book Black Hawk Down, these elements added up to the worst and most disorganized fighting since Vietnam. Bowden's gory book describes in great detail the events of Oct. 3, 1993, when a routine Ranger raid expected to take an hour turned into a protracted firefight that left 18 American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis dead. Bowden brings the reader right onto the streets of Mogadishu, from the moment the Rangers realized bullets were whizzing past their heads to the desperate attempts to evacuate and care for the wounded. Written like a gripping war novel, Black Hawk Down is hard to put aside, in part because the terrible events described aren't fictional. The book ultimately illustrates the folly of ill-defined foreign policy, but it also serves as a strong admonition that no amount of training can prepare a soldier for that tragic moment when things fall apart.