

Cobra II
The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
Author: Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor
Narrator: Craig Wasson
Unabridged: 23 hr 55 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 03/28/2006
Categories: Nonfiction, Political Science, Public Policy, History, Wars, Iraq War
Synopsis
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.