Elusive Victories_ The American Presidency at War-Oxford University Press (2012)

416 notes to pages 284‒289

48. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 41–43.


49. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 71.


50. Hess, Presidential Decisions for War , 2nd ed., 243–44.


51. Hess, Presidential Decisions for War , 2nd ed., 245–46.


52. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 133–34; Ricks, Fiasco , 90–93.


53. Michael C. Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” Foreign Aff airs (May/June
    2007), http://www.foreignaff airs.org/20070501faessay86309/michael-c-
    desch/bush-and-the-generals ; Mackubin Th omas Owens, “Rumsfeld,
    the Generals, and the State of U.S. Civil-Military Relations,” Naval War
    College Review 59 (4) (Autumn 2006): 68–80, at 68–69, 78.


54. Ricks, Fiasco , 68; Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 5–6.


55. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 3, 6–7.


56. Ricks, Fiasco , 68–69.


57. Risa A. Brooks, Shaping Strategy: Th e Civil Military Politics of
    Strategic Assessment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008),
    237–38.


58. A detailed account of the planning and the military operations may be
    found in Woodward, Bush at War. See also Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard
    of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (New York: Norton, 2009, 2010),
    chap. 6.


59. Ricks, Fiasco , 70.


60. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 26; Ricks, Fiasco , 33–34.


61. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 4, 21–22, 28–30, 48; Brooks, Shaping Strat-
    egy , 242–43; Rose, How Wars End , 267.


62. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 34. Ricks gives a fi gure of 10,000. Ricks,
    Fiasco , 37–38.


63. Brooks, Shaping Strategy , 240–41. Further, unlike Operation Desert
    Storm in the 1991 Gulf War, this attack would not begin with a protracted
    bombing campaign. To catch the Iraqis off guard, the ground assault
    would occur almost as soon as the air strikes commenced. Gordon and
    Trainor, Cobra II , 88–89.


64. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 53.


65. Ricks, Fiasco , 40–42.


66. Ricks, Fiasco , 73–76.


67. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 80–83.


68. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 95–98.


69. Ricks, Fiasco , 42.


70. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 5.


71. Rose, How Wars End , 258–59.


72. Brooks, Shaping Strategy , 234, 242; Owens, “Rumsfeld, the Generals, and
    the State of U.S. Civil-Military Relations,” 78.


73. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 139; Brooks, Shaping Strategy , 248.


74. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 139–40.


75. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 73, 141–42; Ricks, Fiasco , 108–9.