Michael R. Gordon has been a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal since October 2017. Previously, he was a military and diplomacy correspondent for The New York Times for 32 years. During the first phase of the Iraq War , he was the only newspaper reporter embedded with the allied land command under General Tommy Franks , a position that "granted him unique access to cover the invasion strategy and its enactment". He and General Bernard E. Trainor have written three books together, including the best-selling Cobra II . As journalists for The New York Times and citing anonymous U.S. officials, Gordon and Judith Miller were the first to report Saddam Hussein 's alleged nuclear weapons program in September 2002 with the article "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts."
10-466: Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq is a 2006 book written by Michael R. Gordon , chief military correspondent for The New York Times , and Bernard E. Trainor , a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general , which details the behind-the-scenes decision-making leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 . It then follows, in depth, the invasion itself and the early months of
20-472: A West German chemical company, had been serving as the "prime contractor" for an alleged Libyan chemical weapons production plant at Rabta since April 1980. The article was based a leak to Gordon "by U.S. administration officials of data that the United States previously had asked West Germany to keep secret". The German government initially denied the allegations, but following further reports on
30-587: The " Coalition of the Willing ". A large part of the book is dedicated to describing the internal meetings and perspectives of Iraqi leadership. Predominant among the actors described are the US and Iraqi generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld , and President George W. Bush and their closest staff members. The book reconstructs the principal battles from primary sources including many interviews with both military leadership and front-line soldiers. Also discussed are
40-800: The 1991 Gulf War ; Cobra II , which covers the Iraq War begun in 2003; The Endgame , which details the U.S. struggle for Iraq from the aftermath of the invasion and the decision to "Surge" under the Bush administration, to the withdrawal of American troops under President Obama; and Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump . The General's War won high praise from several critics and decisionmakers, with then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney describing it as "a fascinating account of
50-533: The Iraq invasion are measured." The New Republic , while calling the book "splendid", wrote that "Gordon and Trainor remain imprisoned in an almost exclusively military analysis of what went wrong ... (which) ... unintentionally underplays the essential problem in Iraq--the problem of politics." From West Germany on New Years Day in 1989, Gordon, together with Steven Engelberg broke the news that Imhausen-Chemie,
60-665: The Rabta plants and pressure from the US administration, a total of three Imhausen employees, including the director, were convicted of illegally supplying CW materials to Libya in October 1991 and a fourth German national was convicted in 1996 for "facilitating Libya's acquisition of computer technology and other equipment to enhance chemical weapons development". Gordon and Engelberg won a George Polk Award for international reporting following their series of articles. Chemical weapons Too Many Requests If you report this error to
70-477: The appalling relations between the major players," won praise from Lawrence Freedman in Foreign Affairs , who wrote that "the research is meticulous and properly sourced, the narrative authoritative, the human aspects of conflict never forgotten." Gordon's paper, The New York Times , called it "a work of prodigious research", adding that it "will likely become the benchmark by which other histories of
80-660: The failures of US intelligence and the paucity of planning concerning post-war operations. Gordon and Trainor argue broadly that America's Iraq War difficulties came from five major failures: "the misreading of the foe", "the overreliance on technological advancement", "the failure to adapt to developments on the battlefield", "the dysfunction of American military structures", and "the Bush Administration's disdain for nation-building". Michael Gordon (journalist) Gordon has written or co-written (with Bernard Trainor ) four books: The Generals' War , which covers
90-416: The occupation through summer 2003. The authors had access to a wide range of materials, including many classified documents, and access to the highest levels of the US and Iraqi government and military. They describe in detail the meetings, correspondence, and positions of the various actors, including not only the US and Iraq, but other countries across the world as they considered the implications of joining
100-491: The war" that he would "recommend" "as something that gives them a different element of some of the key decisions that were made." Jim Lehrer described it as "A superb account and analysis of what went right and what went wrong in the Gulf War"; and Eliot Cohen , writing in Foreign Affairs , called it "the best single volume on the Gulf War." Cobra II , which "focuses on the rushed and haphazard preparations for war and
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