The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf

Drawing on interviews with senior officials and newly declassified documents, Gordon and Trainor provide a behind-the-scenes look at the Gulf War's generalship. The dominant figure, then-chairman of the joint chiefs General Colin Powell, is spotlighted as a politico-military maestro overseeing the dawn of a new era in military technology. In their review of the short, violent, one-sided war, the authors uncover the problems of cooperation among coalition forces and reveal details of interservice tensions, as well as difficulties within the U.S. branches themselves. This meticulous reconstruction of American leadership in Desert Shield/Desert Storm presents the conflict as a laboratory for testing new weapons and doctrine and the services' capacity for cooperation in the field. It also serves as an object lesson in the failure of deterrence and the problem of war termination, with a discussion of President Bush's premature cease-fire order. Gordon is chief New York Times Pentagon correspondent; Trainor is military columnist for the Times. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)