Endgame In Iraq

A Wall Street Journal Best Nonfiction Book of 2012 In this follow-up to their national bestseller Cobra II, Michael Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor deftly piece together the story of the most widely reported but least understood war in American history. This stunning account of the political and military struggle between American, Iraqi, and Iranian forces brings together vivid reporting of diplomatic intrigue and gripping accounts of the blow-by-blow fighting that lasted nearly a decade. Informed by brilliant research and extensive interviews with key figures—including everyone from the intelligence community to Sunni and Shi’ite leaders and former insurgents to senior Iraqi military officers—The Endgame presents a riveting chronicle of the occupation of Iraq to the withdrawal of American troops that is sure to remain the essential account of the war for years to come. This E-book edition also contains a new Appendix collecting twenty-three classified documents, with commentary, that shed new light on some of the military’s crucial mistakes and missed opportunities.

A Wall Street Journal Best Nonfiction Book of 2012 In this follow-up to their national bestseller Cobra II, Michael Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor deftly piece together the story of the most widely reported but least understood war in American history. This stunning account of the political and military struggle between American, Iraqi, and Iranian forces brings together vivid reporting of diplomatic intrigue and gripping accounts of the blow-by-blow fighting that lasted nearly a decade. Informed by brilliant research, classified documents, and extensive interviews with key figures—including everyone from the intelligence community to Sunni and Shi’ite leaders and former insurgents to senior Iraqi military officers—The Endgame presents a riveting chronicle of the occupation of Iraq to the withdrawal of American troops that is sure to remain the essential account of the war for years to come.

Ever since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the questions about what would follow Saddam and what role the United States would play in Iraq’s ultimate destiny have been controversial and hotly debated. At Foreign Affairs, we’ve been at the center of those debates and now, as Iraq slides back into chaos following the American withdrawal, are in the thick of things again. To help you understand today’s headlines, we’ve pulled together the best of our coverage in a new eBook, Endgame in Iraq. The arguments presented span every significant position on the political spectrum, and the authors include world-renowned experts from several disciplines, backgrounds, and countries, including Stephen Biddle, Antony J. Blinken, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Barak Mendelsohn, Vali Nasr, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Ned Parker, Kenneth M. Pollack, Harith al-Qarawee, Steven Simon, Emma Sky, and Micah Zenko. With Iraq’s fate once again hanging in the balance, there’s no better way to figure out how we got here and what will come next.

As the United States heads toward confrontation with Iraq, former U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter updates his book about his experiences in Iraq to explain why he believes Saddam Hussein does not pose a threat to the U.S. and why we should not invade Iraq.

The Endgame is the gripping and authoritative account of the secret military and political effort to pull Iraq from the precipice of full-scale civil war. The book fuses unrivalled access to the in-fighting of Washington policymakers with analysis of strategizing by the generals and hard-fought operations on the battlefield. Along with access to classified documents, the authors draw from sources including military commanders, high-level intelligence operatives, White House aides, Iraqi officials and the soldiers who have tested both the Bush and Obama Administrations' strategies to their limits. This is a book that will be discussed in the White House, the Pentagon and the command centres in Baghdad. It will be an enduring account of the most decisive period of this bitterly divisive war. It is the third volume in the Gordon-Trainor collaboration on the United States military involvement in Iraq; magisterial accounts that have stood the test of time.

In Iraq, the United States made mistake after mistake. Many Americans gave up on the war. Then two generals—David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno—displayed the leadership America expected. Bringing the reader from the White House to the fighting in the streets, combat journalist and bestselling author Bing West explains this astounding turnaround by U.S. forces. In the course of fifteen extended trips over five years, West embedded with more than sixty front-line units, discussing strategy with generals and tactics with corporals. Disposing of myths, he provides an expert's account of the counterinsurgency. This is the definitive study of how American soldiers actually fought.

The Bush administration was remarkably successful in dominating the debate over why we had to go to war with Iraq, but it would soon be faced with the more daunting task of winning the monumental rhetorical struggle over how to write the script of the Iraq War endgame. We examine the twists and turns of the discursive battle over the war's denouement as it played out against the backdrop of the war on terror, and we conclude that while Bush failed to win the argument that Iraq was one with our fight against terrorism, his underlying worldview that we must confront terrorist evil through global military engagement remains an important component of Obama adminstration rhetoric.

From one of the most respected combat reporters in America comes a gripping battlefield history of how the U.S. military corrected its mistakes in Iraq and opened a path to victory. b&w photo insert.