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Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

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I must say that having almost completed Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq that I'm relieved by the fairness of the book. While it does point up an abundant list of mistakes in judgement by those at the highest levels of the command structure, it also makes clear that war is a foggy business at best. It is my opinion only that Cobra II avoids the pitfalls and traps by staying as impartial as possible. I found no axex being ground for either the right or the left.

I am also impressed by the degree of access to materials that Gordon must have had access to. I know that the prepub releases mentioned that Gordon had unprecedented access to both reports and personnel in researching this book. That is even more apparent as you read through the content. Gordon, who is chief military correspondent for the New York Times does a masterful job of telling the story of the Iraq War. Retired General Trainor, a Marines Marine, lends his insight and expertise and I'm sure made sure that Gordon stayed on task.

All together, Cobra II is a masterful book, written by two experienced individuals....experts in their respective fields. I think you will feel informed in a way that perhaps you haven't felt in the past after reading this book. You'll want to read this one.

When it comes to writing a book about the inner workings of the war plan in Iraq and its execution, one can hardly think of a better suited team than Michael Gordon, the chief military correspondent for the NY Times and General Bernard Trainor, formerly of the Marines and now a noted academic. This teams first work, a history of the first Gulf War, is the definitive work on the subject. With unparalleled sources and careful analysis, these two men bring the readers a front seat view of the Iraq War. What they find, to put it bluntly, is not pretty.

Far from a well coordinated strategy, their work paints a portrait of a war plan almost entirely driven by twin ideological beliefs, the first being that a military victory could be won by a small agile army of fewer than 100,000 men and the second that their would be no need for a long term American presence. The reason for the last belief, so tragically mistaken in retrospect, was the idea that the Iraqis would quickly and peacefully form a civil society and, to the degree it was needed the international community would pick up the slack. The holders of these two beliefs? Vice President Dick Cheney and Sec. Def. Rumsfeld, to whom President Bush gave full authority to run the war as they saw fit. As this work demonstrates with a shocking degree of detail, all those who opposed this world view found themselves sidelined in the lead up and the execution of the war.

Gordon and Trainor offer examples such as the State Department and Sec. Powell who warned the President, the VP, and the Sec. Def of the near certainty of a break down of civil society following the conflict. They were ignored. Military officers with experience in Bosnia and Haiti made raised similar warnings. They too were ignored. Indeed, when military commanders on the ground in the race for Baghdad began to understand that the US faced a well planned and coordinated gorilla insurgency and requested the manpower and time to quell it, they were threatened with being pulled from command. Reading this work, one finds General Franks in well over his head, lacking the background to deal with the chaos that followed the war's end, nor willing to confront his bosses with problems on the ground.

While these authors do an impressive job keeping their analysis free of ideology, the work allows the reader only one conclusion, that the current gorilla war in Iraq was perhaps avoidable and certainly could have been less violent if the civilian leadership had taken the right steps at the beginning. These were not cases of hindsight being 20/20, but events predictable by experienced professionals that the President, the VP and the Sec Def chose to ignore. All of this begs at least one important question, which is why Don Rumsfield still has a desk at the Pentagon.

"Cobra II" provides a detailed accounting of the planning and execution of the Iraq War. The heroism and bravery of American troops under fire was well-documented and moving; unfortunately, there was also much to report about many at the top - how their incompetence and arrogance bungled the handling of post-war Iraq, has thrown the entire outcome into chaos, and has cost innumerable lives.

Bush II, prior to his election, signaled that he wanted to overhaul the U.S. military - Gulf I had taken too long to plan and execute. Bush also did not see the need for lengthy peacekeeping and nation-building, such as the U.S. had undertaken in the Balkans. These viewpoints were presumably major factors in selecting Donald Rumsfeld, who shared them, as Secretary of Defense.

From the very beginning military leaders recommended close to 500,000 troops for Iraq, especially for the post-war phase. Rumsfeld, showing irritation at the first presentation of such a plan, was asked by Chief of Staff "How many did he thought might be needed?" Rumsfeld's reply was 125,000, "and even that was probably too many." The military's plan reflected long-standing military principles about force levels needed to defeat Iraq, control a population greater than 24 million, and secure a nation that size of California, with porous borders. Rumsfeld's numbers, in contrast, seemed to be pulled out of thin air.

Many planning iterations and about 1.5 years later, the U.S. attacked Iraq with the number of troops Rumsfeld initially fixed on. The U.S., however, was not alone in making major miscalculations. Saddam's top priority was internal threats and Iran - the U.S. was a distant third. According to Saddam, the Republican Guard had stopped the U.S.-led forces at the Euphrates in Gulf I, and his plan was to do it again. Saddam also believed that it was the threat of chemical weapons that kept the U.S. from marching on Baghdad. Opponents dared not raise their hands. Shiite troops (the most disposable, to Saddam) were located on the front lines, far from Baghdad, where the risk of them revolting was minimal. Further, unit commanders were prohibited from talking to each other lest they plot a revolt. Leadership posts were assigned on the basis of loyalty - especially to relatives. Each village, town, and city would become a semi-independent citadel with Fedayeen units drawing on caches of light weapons guarded by Baathists. The stockpiling of weapons and ammunition was not detected by American spy satellites.

General Tommy Franks, U.S. Commander, initially assumed that the State Department would handle post-war Iraq. Only just prior to hostilities was this clarified and given to DOD. Regardless, civilian leaders planned to emulate their successes in Afghanistan, despite Army leaders pointing out that Iraq was much more densely populated and therefore difficult to control. Other major (erroneous) assumptions were that many Iraqi units would surrender and switch sides - providing manpower with which to maintain order after the invasion, that the U.S. would be greeted with flowers, and that civilian institutions would readily resume their regular functions with but a few U.S. advisors. (Planners forgot that destroying communications - key to quickly taking over - would also greatly hinder post-war operation.) Initial planning was for $1 billion/year for three years of reconstruction, aided by Iraqi oil revenues. DOD also balked at a planned $38 million for post-war security (later revised to $1 billion). As for the Iraqi police, the CIA assessment was that they were apolitical and well-trained (reality was they were largely poorly-trained, unreliable traffic cops, and hated by the populace). Finally, U.N. assistance was NOT welcome (they were incompetent); later events brought a reversal in this position, but by then word of problems was spreading around the world. Thus, the U.S. plan to leave within six months and have a British, Polish, and Muslim (largely led by Saudi-Arabia) division each, augmented by constabularies from numerous nations never got off the ground.

Much of "Cobra II" is taken up with detailed descriptions of fighting at the small-unit level, with numerous stories of incredible bravery.

Heavy bombing did provide relief for tactical operations, but failed to take out top Saddam leaders - the execution was always precise, but the intelligence flawed. Special Forces and CIA operatives were of little/no value in Iraq - they had not been in the country prior to the attack (such as in Afghanistan), and helicopters were often sidelined by dust.

The main opposition came not from Republican Guards but fierce Fedayeen in civilian clothes, as well as foreign guerillas. One U.S. commander was almost relieved for remarking to the press that the opposition was not like what had been trained for.

Side problems included keeping Kurds from taking over territory with their armed bands (likely to provoke a reaction in Turkey), and Chalabi's army of unarmed 570 exiles (played no role).
Between the poor pre-war state of Iraq's infrastructure, U.S. damage, and looting, society deteriorated after the invasion. Sewage, water, garbage, gasoline availability, telephones, and electricity all suffered. Iraqi's could not believe that a nation that had sent a man to the moon could fail - it must be that we didn't care. Meanwhile, without either electricity or functioning TV facilities, the U.S. could not communicate with the Iraqis.

The initial post-war occupation did not go well - lack of money, Iraqi staffing, or adequate U.S. troops resulted in massive looting and infrastructure problems. Gen. Garner was soon replaced by Paul Bremer - lacking Mid-East or reconstruction experience (considered assets by some). His first decree was a tough de-Baathification (decapitating much of the nation's skilled leadership), and his second was disbanding the Iraqi army - creating major dissension and failing to make use of their potential for stabilization. (Acerbated Rumsfeld's decision to short-staff U.S. military, which Bremer had protested.)

Bottom-Line: The future of Iraq is in doubt; however, there can be no doubt as to the heroism is American forces and the incompetence of some of their leaders.

Michael Gordon and retired Marine Lt.Gen Bernard Trainer are famed as the authors of the definitive history of the 1991 Iraq War entitled the General's War. Their latest history, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, is by far the most factual, balanced, and comprehensive book written to date about the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Gordon and Trainer draw from an incredibly diverse and wide range of sources: personal interviews, military planning documents, news reports, and experiences as embedded reporters during the ground campaign. The book smoothly details the process of the war from early planning to execution and to the occupation afterwords. Exceptional detail sheds light on the tension between CENTCOM, the Pentagon, and the White House, the tactical decisions and movements of the Army 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and special operatros who operated in Western Iraq. The amount of detail and the straightforward writing style give an intimate glimpse into the decision making process, and help the reader form their own conlcusions based on the evidence at hand.

Considering the controversial topic, it is most impressive that the authors remain non-partisan throughout. Criticism is leveled where appropriate. Secretary Rumsfeld's decision to push for lower troop levels and the lack of US post-war planning contributed directly to the post-war choas and ongoing insurgency. CENTCOM commander Franks is shown as an abrasive personality determined to win the war, without much regard to what would happen after. The authors also do an excellent job clearing up commonly held misconceptions about the war. For example, the President was not as eager to invade Iraq as commonly believed; Al-Qaida was the highest priority, and his decision for invasion came only after the Pentagon, Intel Community, and military all agreed that Iraq presented a long term threat to the United States. It is also revealed that senior leaders in the Iraqi government believed they possessed large chemical and biological stockpiles, and it was not until the eve of the war that Saddam told his shocked generals that they had no weapons. The fact that Saddam hid that information from all of his closest advisors makes the US government's incorrect WMD assessments more understandable in hindsight.

Ultimately, it will take several decades and the release of millions of documents before a more comprehensive analysis and history can be written. At that point, the players involved can be judged for posterity. For now, Gordon and Trainer presents the facts as they are currently known, and let the reader judge the rest. Cobra II is by far the best book on the subject and will likely remain so for years to come. This book is highly recommended.

This book is well written and well organized. It provides a useful big picture sense of how the war was planned, the internal friction between different governmental and military constituencies, and the failure of Franks and the NSC to provide a useful counterweight to Rumsfeld's attempt to turn the Iraq campaign into a showcase for "transformation."

The book is also strong insofar as it details at a very high level of detail the fighting from March to June of 2003. "Fiasco" and other Iraq books have tended to treat this phase of the war as uninteresting, but we should not forget at the time that we were warned of a Stalingrad-like conventional campaign. Instead, the US soundly defeated the Iraqi conventional military, just as it did in the first Gulf War.

The book has a number of important flaws. First, it has little on the failures of international diplomacy to secure allies before the war, Turkish land routes, or European contributions to the post-war planning. It also gives short shrift to allies in its history of Cobra II, omitting even a detailed discussion of the British campaign in Basra.

Second, like "Fiasco" and Bob Woodward's new book, it often has unverifiable sources. A reader or scholar cannot really weigh evidence from an unnamed senior military official giving his information on an unknown date. The authors also fail to disclose any plans to keep their data in archival format or otherwise make it available to scholars. This book is merely the simulation of a scholarly history; it is, instead, simply a lengthy piece of journalism, with all of the flaws of that idiom.

Third, the authors' discussion of US training, lack of linguistic capability, flawed strategic thinking about insurgency, and the differences in approach of different units in phase IV is superficial and seems to go too far in letting the military off the hook. Everyone from a Major on up should have known something needed to be done to gear up American forces for this kind of occupation since March of 2002 at the latest. The superior Marine Corps appraoch (and that of certain Army commandres like Petraeus) is only visible when comapred to the heavy-handed fortress mentality of a great number of Army units who made no effort to win hearts and minds by focusing on Iraqis as the center of gravity.

Finally, the authors do almost nothing to get a handle on Iraqi attitudes, views, strategies, and internal motivation. There have been a number of important articles and books on this subject, including the writings of Anthony Shadid. The Iraqis remain a mysterious and primitive violent people in Cobra II's authors' views, and that view is part of the cultural blindness that impairs US forces in their counterinsurgency efforts. Any military history that focuses only on one side runs serious risks of reinforcing earlier failures. I fear the authors heavy focus on US conventional superiority and military prowess in the face of meddling civilians will fail to occasion the kind of soul searching that the military needs to do to beef up cultural awareness, language ability, and counterinsurgency and nation-building capability in the years ahead.

This is a very good book, but its not going to be for everyone. Its a passive but fair accounting of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Nobody comes out of the book looking very good. And rather than a single flaw, the book unintentionally makes the case that the entire process broke down from pre-war planning to execution to the postwar situation.

Rumsfeld failed because he is a bad manager and a bad leader. Rather than setting parameters and letting his people come up with a plan, he forced himself and his assistants into the process. The military plan became a plan driven by his political considerations rather than strictly military ones. At the top level of the military, the JCS was shown to be powerless to influence events given that power in the military had been devolved to what amounted to regional commanders like Tommy Franks.

Tommy Franks come across as one of the worst people in the book. For all his talk and all his bluster, he didn't stand up for himself or for the military. And once the war started, he ran away from it and his responsibilities into retirement as fast as he could. Franks was the one person in the chain of command who could have stood up to Rumsfeld, but when the time came he didn't do it.

The war plan itself was a strategic and tactical failure. The book shows a plan that was focused on destroying the Iraqi military and state rather than taking control of the country. In page after page, it can be seen that the insurgency didn't start after the war. The insurgency was the war since day one. "Victory" was ultimately achieved by bypassing or ignoring the real war. The US could go anywhere in the country and apply force at any particular point, but it could "hold" nothing. When Baghdad was reached, they lacked the force to control the city and all law broke down as a result. In the end, the error has always been in pursing a policy in Iraq without the necessary forces to make it happen. The political leadership of the US (from Bush downward) wanted a political result in Iraq but didn't want to pay the price. Every time this has happened in American History, its led to disaster from the burning of washington in the war of 1812 to Vietnam.

The actual fighting of the war comes alive in the book as nowhere else. For all the embedded reporters and coverage of the war, few places other than this book can explain what really happened. It was not the walk-over people think it was and the initial phase of the war should have caused a whole lot of deep rethinking to go on within the miltiary about future wars. But that has not happened.

As far as the postwar period, this isn't the best book for looking at that phase of the operation. It goes through the obvious things like how various ill-considered political ideas of neo-cons in washington turned into policy in Iraq which fueled the growth of the insurgency.

As far as the insurgency goes, the book is good in showing that it existed since the first day of the war, that it had nothing to do with international terrorism and that it had little to with Saddam Hussein once the weapons were passed out. The political people at the Defense Department believed US troops would be greeted as liberators and they even prepared for whole units of the Iraqi army to come over to the US side. When confronted with that not happening and with a rather obvious insurgency in Iraq, they chose to deny reality. They, like many in America, took a small crowd cheering the bringing down of a statue of Saddam in the middle of Baghdad by an American military unit who put a US flag up to celebrate as proof that their delusions were the truth.

The conclusions I took from the book is that the US had a bad plan in Iraq that was never going to work because the resources available were not what was required. That the plan was bad because Rumsfeld and the civilian leadership at the Pentagon put political objectives above military reality and that the uniformed military (Tommy Franks) did not stand up for itself when the pressure came. Finally, the insurgency in Iraq existed from day-one of the war and that for political reasons, the decision makers in government preferred to pretend it did not exist.

Its important that people read this book, start understanding the military lessons of the war and put aside all the political delusions about the war. What the book says to me about the current situation is the same as the start of the war. The US has two choices: We either put in the necessary force to win or we get out. The politicians non-choice of saying we can't afford to put in the forces to win and that we can't politically afford to get out is always a false choice.

"Cobra II", the recently-released book by Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, tells the Iraq war story from a unique perspective. Concentrating almost entirely on the planning, invasion and occupation of Iraq, the authors relate a war strategy and deployment fraught with compound errors in judgment and administration. It is an amazingly well-told work.

As in any story of conflict there are good guys and not so good ones. Gordon and Trainor are unsparingly critical of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks. While Rumsfeld's views and applications have been roundly criticized before, Franks gets a harsh review in this book. The two made mistake after mistake, much of it due to their own unwillingness to hear views of others and their own self-assurance that their ways were the right ways. "Cobra II" does much to unravel their positions.

If it seems early on that one easily gets bogged down by the book's heavy use of acronyms, (the military loves them and so do the authors) staying with this book is worth it. The narrative begins to unfold in a classic crescendo from the time the first U.S. troops entered Iraq and continues through a breathtaking couple of chapters describing "Thunder Run", led in part by the courageous, risk-taking Colonel Dave Perkins, with the solid overall support of Lieutenant General David McKiernan....two of the really good guys portrayed here. It's the best part of "Cobra II". What appears so new to me is that this story is a ground story (the events of the invasion, as most Americans remember them, came from reporting of air attacks). Gordon and Trainor don't just describe the plights of those who made it through... they tell also of the final moments of many soldiers who didn't come home safely.

Making not much more than cameo appearances in "Cobra II" are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, although their collective presence is channeled through Rumsfeld. The authors have, rightly I think, kept their focus on the men and women who actually were part of the invasion and occupation. The many maps (included in the front of the book) are a help in putting the invasion's movements into context.

I highly recommend "Cobra II" for its sobering look at the war in Iraq. While the authors take strong positions they give a balanced account of the war, and ultimately, what went wrong with the aftermath.

I dread when celebrities talk politics because I fear--and know--I will look at them and their work just a little differently once I know their political persuasion. I'm not the type to boycott any artist or actor just for their political convictions but, try as a I might, their thoughts on politics influence my thoughts on them.

That is why I love books which leave the political at home and load you up on FIRE: facts, incidents, reasons and examples.

Gordon and Trainor have done their homework and do a great job of pulling back the curtain so we can see how we got from Point A to Point B. Like Bowden's and Naylor's works (BHD and Operation Anaconda), we gain great insight into the goings-on on Operation Cobra II, the invasion of Iraq. With that insight comes the good and the bad, and I found myself wincing sometimes at the decisions that were made, yet the authors go out of their way to remind us of the all-important "why" those were decisions were made by showing the proper context without casting too much judgement. Like watching laws and sausage get made, it ain't usually pretty but you come out of the process a lot better informed of what you're getting.

I also admire the scope they decided to cover. The book focuses not on just the political, skillfully informing us of the NSC, DoD, and diplomatic machines, but it gives a great chronology of the ground and air war itself, even going down to company-level actions when it was necessary to do so. In the end we complete the loop like a great detective novel, having seen the decision points as they happen and then having the luxury to see how those decisions affected the warfighters on the ground.

All in all, Cobra II is an excellent and well paced book which quenched my thirst for knowledge on the political and military dynamics that have led us to where we are in Iraq today minus the usually-distracting personal politics of the authors. In the end, they've given you the info and with the exception of a few obvious observations, pretty much allow you to draw your own conclusions.

Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor have done an outstanding job of researching and reporting how the US planned the invasion of Iraq and the military carried out that invasion. I cannot imagine how it would even be possible for any other author to top them on those two subjects.

However, the title of the book promises the inside story of not just the invasion of Iraq, but also its occupation. Here, the book falls short. I was really quite surprised by how little attention was paid to this extremely important topic, which does not even begin until chapter 23. And there are only 24 chapters, so that gives you an idea how quickly the authors dispense with that topic.

What has become clear to me in retrospect is that the authors' strong point is military history from a tactical and operational standpoint. If anything, the detail presented on those two topics goes a bit overboard at times, with incredibly meticulous descriptions of even the most mundane elements of the combat operations described in the book. Let it not be said that the authors did not research those subjects thoroughly. But once the shooting stopped, so seemingly did the authors' attention span. A decent effort is made in the Epilogue to tie things together and discuss the deficiencies in planning, but the problems that arose during the occupation really should have been given a lot more attention. Still, this book has enough strengths to deserve a four-star rating in my opinion.

I also recommend "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq" by George Packer, which covers the war and the occupation (in fact, mostly the occupation) from the standpoint of ordinary Iraqis. It is an absolutely superb book on that topic, and also the complex and politically charged subject of how the perfect storm of people and events made the Iraq war possible in the first place. You really won't know the whole story unless you read both these books.

Michael Gordon's and Bernard Trainor's "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq" tells the story of Operation Iraqi Freedom from the initial planning stages through the summer of 2003. This is a very comprehensive book and based, in part, on a secret report created by the Joint Forces Command after the war. Although this book has generally received fawning reviews, I had very mixed feelings as I read the book.

As others have noted, the authors tell a comprehensive, thorough story of the entire campaign. They usually offer good analysis and (at times) good criticisms, supported by the facts. However, their criticisms often outshine the better parts of the book.

The authors are extremely critical of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Tommy Franks, and many others who planned and executed the invasion. The authors criticize the planners primarily for ignoring the need to invade with a much larger force. While they are certainly justified to be critical of a war that was supposed to last a few months and is now dragging into its fifth year, their criticisms form the thesis of the book and become a repeated mantra that permeates the entire narrative. This really detracts from the story they are trying to tell and often tell well.

The authors' treatment is not even-handed and their critical outlook clouds the story of the invasion. The authors focus so much on the negatives of the initial campaign to capture Baghdad that they ignore what an immensely successful campaign it was -- no one expected the Iraqi regime to fall in four short weeks. However, reading their narrative one would think that the American forces (the authors ignore the British forces) made mistake after mistake and were lucky to even reach Baghdad. Their story lacks the perspective that even the best-laid plans can be thrown away once contact is made with the enemy. The story they ignored was that, like all military operations, Operation Iraqi Freedom, was fraught with mix-ups, screw-ups, miscalculations, blunders, and other problems - Clausewitzian friction. However, the American forces overcame all of this and waged an extremely successful land campaign.

One other negative was that the book lacked a real unity of approach to describing the war. The authors attempted to narrate the war from the "big-picture," but then, during the actual fighting, spent a lot of time describing the blow-by-blow and minute-by-minute actions of the fighting at the platoon, company, and battalion level. The story was too detailed when they took this approach to selective engagements. While authors such as Max Hastings may be able to pull this off as part of their larger narrative, it was cumbersome and distracting when Gordon and Trainor tried to.

Three other criticism: 1) This book completely ignored the British actions in and around Basra; 2) This book didn't "complete" the story and take the story to a logical stopping point (such as the Sadr uprising in April 2004). The authors just trailed off in the summer of 2003 (they didn't even cover the UN bombing that summer) instead of showing how one of their major criticism - lack of sufficient troops - could have made a major difference in late 2003 and early 2004; and 3) the authors' narrative style was difficult to read at times. The book felt like it was cobbled together and written on a deadline, and because the authors relied on so many sources and described the actions of so many officers and soldiers (especially during the battle narrative), it was difficult to follow everyone they were writing about, especially since they usually did not use their rank after the first mention.

Overall, though, this is a pretty good book for anyone interested in the military planning and history of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Despite the many problems listed above, the book is thorough (if not even-handed) and full of good information.