Below is an excerpt of the Washington Post's review of Cobra II  The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, the book that is not simply sitting on my bedside table but which I am actually reading.  

It is too soon to provide my own brief review other than to say that I am no military history, nor even history, buff.  I just want to start making more sense out of what actually happened, admitting that I get most of my war analysis from the Daily Show and the New Yorker (the latter easier to admit than the former).

Although it's ok with me that blogging has completely replaced television as a leisure activity, Mr. Thrifty recently commented to its seems to have replaced reading books with covers and paper pages held in my hands.

Because that is not OK, I immediately headed off to my nearest Borders and its 3-for-the-price-of-2 table.  I decided to tackle Cobra first and am glad I did.  I am beginning to make sense of the actual front page and occasional network news again (the latter apparently available for download -- sans commercials! -- somewhere on the 'net since Thrifty has adopted a new marital habit of bringing his computer over to the couch where I'm blogging and turning on Katie Couric for me.  Ah togetherness!!).   

Before giving you the Washington Post Review, I'd like to suggest to my ADR buddies that they let us know what they're reading.  This isn't so much as a "meme" tag as it is a request to make reading material a category on their blogs, as I've just made "What I'm Reading Now" on mine.  

How about it Tammy Lenski, Diane Levin, Geoff Sharpe, and Stephanie West Allen?  Wouldn't you like your readers to know from time to time what it is that you're reading?  I'd sure appreciate knowing.

On their "inside story" of the war, Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor . . . show that the U.S. military's tactical brilliance during the war's early stages came despite the strategic miscalculations of senior civilian and military leaders -- and that the Bush team's misjudgments made the current situation in Iraq far worse than it need have been.

As it turns out, in addition to the war with Iraq's tyrant, there was an ongoing war between U.S. field commanders, their own senior commander (Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of Central Command) and civilian leaders in Washington.

The Bush administration's two major strategic miscalculations are by now familiar: first, a broad-based intelligence failure regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the viability of its economic infrastructure and the reception Iraqis would give invading U.S. forces; and second, underestimating the challenge of stabilizing post-invasion Iraq.

Gordon and Trainor -- respectively a New York Times reporter and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general, and collectively the authors of a widely hailed 1995 book on Operation Desert Storm, The Generals' War -- go beyond these issues to focus on logical flaws in prewar planning that should have raised eyebrows among senior U.S. officials.

For example, they report that when the CIA identified nearly 950 suspected WMD sites, military planners argued for additional troops to secure them lest the terrorists purportedly in league with Saddam Hussein spirit the WMD away during the chaos of war, thereby producing the very outcome the administration was trying to avoid. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was determined to attack with a "lean force."

The book's core, however, centers not on Beltway deliberations but on the dash to Baghdad by the Army and the Marines.The authors do a fine job making one of the most lop-sided campaigns in memory interesting, but the surprises that the Americans encounter turn out to be even more compelling. Senior U.S. field commanders soon realize that their principal enemy is not the Iraqi army but irregular forces -- many of them foreigners -- employing guerrilla tactics. These are portents of the full-blown insurgency to come, but no one back in Washington proves capable of connecting the dots.

While U.S. soldiers and Marines shifted their focus on the fly, the Bush administration failed to recast its strategy for the postwar endgame. Consequently, once American forces seized Baghdad, U.S. troop deployments were curtailed and units were instructed to prepare for a rapid drawdown -- even while the Iraqi police and military forces that the administration expected to preserve order were being disbanded.

While Gordon and Trainor recount the misjudgments of many senior civilian and military leaders, Gen. Franks fares the worst. Many of his statements defy explanation, including his mystifying declaration that "I am not gratified by enough forces on the ground" and his fondness for terms like "functional componency" and "strategic exposure." The general's battlefield guidance is often, well, general; he tells his commanders to take "action on all fronts," which, as the authors note, is "no better than issuing no guidance at all." The authors conclude, scathingly, that Franks "never acknowledged the enemy he faced nor did he comprehend the nature of the war he was directing."

The senior military leadership in Washington comes off little better; they are depicted as a bunch of empty suits. Then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, is portrayed as a reflexive team player incapable of expressing an independent view. The Army chief of staff at the time, Gen. Eric Shinseki, warned before the war that projected U.S. troop levels were too low to stabilize Iraq, but the authors report that he failed to press home his case once his views were dismissed by senior civilian leaders around Rumsfeld and his then-deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.