COBRA II - A Book by Lt. General Bernard Trainor (USMC Ret) and Michael R. Gordon

Fundamental mistakes were made in Iraq, according to Lt. General Bernard Trainor, U.S.M.C., Retired, speaking at a Georgetown restaurant in the Fall of 2006 to promote his book,"COBRA II". Chief among them were disbanding the Iraqi military and dismissing any civil service workers who had had membership in the Ba'ath Party of Sadam Hussein. Both were decisions made by L. Paul Bremer when he was in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority. In interviews, Mr. Bremer counters that there was no Iraqi Army to disband - it simply melted away by itself. General Trainor disputes this, claiming that disbanding even what was left of the army, without pay, put 300,000 angry ex-soldiers with AK47s on the street with nothing to do and no money or jobs. General Trainor further maintains that these actions brought chaos and with it the start of the insurgency, that we could have, but did not, prevent.

The General is a respected and decorated veteran combat commander with a distinguished military career. The book, the General said, drew heavily on information contained in captured official Iraqi government files that he and co-author Michael R. Gordon were made privy to, and from interviews of Iraqi and American military people.

What he discovered in his research was that although Sadam undoubtedly had weapons of mass destruction at some point - after all, he had used them on the Iranians as well as on Iraqis - he did not have them at the time of the invasion in the Spring 2003. But, General Trainor told us, Sadam was following a policy of deception, claiming that he had WMDs when he actually did not. The deception was designed not to fool the Americans, who didn't concern him because he firmly believed the Americans would never invade Iraq - they had no reason to - but to fool the Shia in the southern part of the country, the Kurds in the north and to fool Iran. These were the groups he believed to be a threat to his survival in power and survival in power was his only concern. According to documents seen by the authors, Sadam was so successful in this deception that his closest advisors and his top military commanders were fooled into believing that Iraq had WMDs. Immediately prior to the start of the invasion, at a meeting, Sadam broke the news that there were no such weapons; they had been destroyed. According to General Trainor, the Iraqi Generals were stunned. They were counting on them to fight the Americans and now, at this late hour, they learned they did not exist. What General Trainor did not explain is if Sadam's deception was so complete he was able to fool not only every intelligence agency in the world and his own closest political and military advisors into believing he had WMDs, why would President Bush not think so, too. And why then, would President Bush not do everything he could possibly do to prevent Sadam from using them again - on us.

This is, perhaps, the reason General Trainor and co-author Gordon make no claim that the decision to attack Iraq was a bad decision. In the book, General Trainor told us, they only deal with how the decision was made, the conflicts that existed in and among both the military leaders and the political leaders, and the mistakes that were made in the planning and execution of the invasion, and the period immediately following.

General Trainor gives unrestrained praise to the troops and junior officers who he said did a magnificent job of adjusting to the changing circumstances on the ground. This high level of performance he attributes to the fact that the US has a professional military now. But he also awards unrestrained criticism for the military and civilian leadership, focusing especially on what he refers to as the "troika" of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. The three of them are responsible, in his view, for the failure to bring order to Iraq after more than three years of trying. From the start the plan was flawed, he claims. Basically, it called for a quick defeat of the Iraqi army and overthrow of Hussein. When that was accomplished, they thought, other countries, seeing the opportunities to profit from the reconstruction of the country, would send their troops in in order to stake their claim. They expected a division of troops from Europe, another from India, and more from other countries. However, as the insurgency began to grow, coupled with the widespread opposition in Europe to the invasion, none of this materialized and the US, along with the British, were left to go it almost alone.

So what do we do now? The General never really answered that question, choosing instead to skirt around it, saying that the Bush Administration was looking for small incremental gains that it hopes will accumulate to the point that we can declare success and safely leave. Recent events prove that the General was wrong in this assessment. Clearly President Bush was looking for a victory and it appears now that there will be one.

There surely is much more to this book, of course, than this report of the General's remarks at a luncheon. It covers the period through the end of 2003. However, hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and describing errors that were made as though those who made them knew in advance that their strategy was flawed is misleading in that it surely does not - could not - reflect the decision making in the Bush Administration at the time, and is not done, it seems to me, to shed light. It is only designed to sell books by sensationalizing what took place and appealing to an audience that desires to hear such criticism rather than hearing a way forward.