NYT rev: "Cobra II" a damning indictment of the Bush admin's nat sec team

[Bozita]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/books/28nayl.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

March 28, 2006
Books of The Times | 'Cobra II'

How the Iraq War Was Planned and Launched
By SEAN NAYLOR

A work of prodigious research, "Cobra II" will likely become the benchmark by which other histories of the Iraq invasion are measured. Note the word invasion. Cobra II was the name United States commanders gave the operation to depose Saddam Hussein's regime. It is the story of the planning, execution and immediate aftermath of that invasion that is related by Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times's chief military correspondent, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former military correspondent for The Times, in "Cobra II."

The book's title is therefore more apt than its subtitle — "The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq" — which is only half accurate. Because the narrative essentially ends in the summer of 2003, this book is not a history of the counterinsurgency campaign that the United States has been waging in Iraq since then. It is, however, a penetrating examination of how and why the United States got itself into that mess.

Considering the wealth of detail it contains, "Cobra II" is a smooth read, but a passing familiarity with the military and the events in question will help the reader. In a work of such scope, some issues inevitably receive less attention than some might think they merit. The rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and the way the Defense Department misinformed the press about her situation receives no mention. The impact of the Pentagon's unprecedented decision to facilitate the embedding of hundreds of reporters goes similarly unexplored. The text also contains a few mistakes — the British Special Air Service is misnamed at one point. But these are few and far between, and largely inconsequential.

The bulk of the book is taken up with a near-comprehensive blow-by-blow account of the fighting that occurred over four weeks in March and April 2003. But while these chapters shed new light on several important facets of the war, and demonstrate how realities on the ground did not match Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's theories of military transformation, the book's beginning and ending sections are the most valuable. Here the authors explain how the administration of President George W. Bush drove the nation to war in Iraq, and how decisions made before the invasion and immediately following Mr. Hussein's ouster precipitated the vicious insurgency now wracking that country.

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[leveymg]

1. What a relief. Thought they had remade that awful Sy Stalone movie.

Actually, it Sounds like another awful NYT Iraq white-wash to me. Surprised they didn't have Judy Miller write a chapter, "The hunt for Saddam's WMDs"