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How We Got to Where We Are In Iraq
We quit while we were ahead, and rapidly fell behind. That's the message of Cobra II, the best book so far written about the war in Iraq. Cobra II was the code name LtGen. David McKiernan gave to the battle plan for the invasion of Iraq. (The first Operation Cobra was Patton's plan for breakout from Normandy to liberate France in World War II.)"The U.S. military commanders who battled their way to Baghdad and endured the long hot summer of 2003 believe that there was a window of opportunity in the early weeks and months of the invasion, which was allowed to close," wrote Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor in their epilogue. "Though some degree of opposition was unavoidable, the virulent insurgency that emerged was not inevitable but was aided by military and political blunders in Washington." Unfortunately, that judgment is the least supported part of the 507-page book, most of which is the story about how the battle plan evolved, and a gripping, unvarnished account of all the battles soldiers and Marines fought on their way to Baghdad. Posted by: ryuge 2006-06-13 |
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