War! is basically 126 pages of Emergance and 54 pages of Unwired with neither side developed half as well. If you were waiting for an in depth look at the setting as a vehicle for mercenaries and the equipment and tactics they use, you're going to be disappointed. If you were looking for a detail of the war between Aztlan and Amazonia; profiles, the history, the start, the major battles, the warriors and their nationally specific ways of waging war... you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for Bogota: The Location Book and 30 pages of gear that you can really only use about 10 of, then you'll be happy with your $18 purchase.
Separating the fluff and the crunch is a solid development choice. Any table will need both to really be playing Shadowrun, but that way you aren't trying to recall what was happening in the metaplot when x bit of gear got released so you can look it up to see what it does again. It means that people who don't give a lick about Bogota don't have to flip past 110 pages of the setting (an admittedly alternate setting meant for mercs and other military oriented characters) to get to a small section that contains an even smaller subset of high end gear a player can hope to have.
You can never fully take the fluff out of the crunch or the crunch out of the fluff, and you shouldn't try. But War! is a book that's going to sell more copies on the back 30 pages than it ever sees for the first 110, and the development staff are fully aware of that. That's why the rest of the material they had written up for War! but decided to hold back will be sold separately to you in an attempt to double dip a fan bases well known love for crunch.
Also it's good idea to go over to DS and look up the post by Synner that described the original plan for the book that became War!. You'll see the plan for an updated version of Fields of Fire with an eye to the changes that made SR4 and SR4A such a revolution for the setting and mechanics.