Informed by unparalleled access to still.secret documents, interviews with
top field commanders, and a review of the military.s own internal after.
action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America.s invasion
and occupation of Iraq.a conflict that could not be lost but one that the
United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White
House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the
inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on
classified United States government intelligence, it also provides a unique
account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted
their war strategy.

Written by Michael R. Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New
York Times, who spent the war with the Allied land command, and Bernard E.
Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former director of
the National Security Program at Harvard University.s John F. Kennedy School
of Government, Cobra II traces the interactions among the generals, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush. It dramatically
reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought
them, providing reliable accounts of the clashes waged by conventional and
Special Operations forces. It documents with precision the failures of
American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.

Unimpeachably sourced, Cobra II describes how the American rush to Baghdad
provided the opportunity for the virulent insurgency that followed. The
brutal aftermath in Iraq was not inevitable and was a surprise to the
generals on both sides; Cobra II provides the first authoritative account
as to why. It is a book of enduring importance and incisive analysis.
a comprehensive account of the most reported yet least understood war in
American history.

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