Col. Pat Lang who runs a terrific blog
Sic Semper Tyrannis 2006 and has just written a short powerful review of two recently published books on the Iraq fiasco. A PDF link is available on his blog or
here
(scroll down as review begins in the middle of the page)
Lang's bio (from his site):
Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets). He served in the Department of Defense both as a serving officer and then as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service for many years. He is a highly decorated veteran of several of America's overseas conflicts including the war in Vietnam. He was trained and educated as a specialist in the Middle East by the U.S. Army and served in that region for many years. He was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) he was the "Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism," and later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service." For his service in DIA, he was awarded the "Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive." This is the equivalent of a British knighthood. He is an analyst consultant for many television and radio broadcasts.
Lang describes the two books as: "Cobra II is a massively detailed account of what happened on the American and coalition side of the hill before, during and after Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Iraqi Perspectives Report was written by a team of scholars at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in Washington for the United States Joint Forces Command (JFCOM)."
Lang summarizes the IDA report in 9 bullet points concluding that, "In short, Iraq had prepared no adequate defense of its territory and was incapable of resistance to coalition forces except through the medium of irregular and improvised attacks on coalition forces' supply lines."
The COBRA II book is also summarized briefly and cogently. Check it out.