COBRA II The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

Journalist Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor offer an intricately reported account of the Bush Administration's planning of the Iraq War and its subsequent prosecution. COBRA II is not a polemic, but history as current and detailed as it comes. Craig Wasson's matter-of-fact tone hits the ear flatly at first, but it is a stylistic choice that works well in piling on the details of political posturing, bureaucratic infighting, questionable weapons reports, murky inter-agency communication, and clashing assumptions that preceded the war. His dispassionate tone is less successful at rendering the chaos and emotional detail of battle, but on balance it's the right choice for this exhaustive document of the controversial war's contentious beginning. M.G. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 06/ JAN 07]