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Michael R. Gordon is the chief military correspondent for The New York Times . He wrote most of that paper's coverage of the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq in 2002. 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 two books together, including the best-selling Cobra II.

As an author

Together with Bernard Trainor, he has written two books: The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, which covers the 1991 Gulf War, and Cobra II, which covers the Iraq War begun 2003.

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 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 the appalling relations between the major players," won praise from Lawrence D. 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 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."

References

1. Gordon's page at the New York Times.
2. "Engdame: Interviews", WGBH Public Broadcsting, Boston, 11 January 2007.
3. "Cobra II", at the Pantheon Books website.
4. Cobra II, reviewed by Lawrence Freedman, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2006.
5. "Optimism Goes to War", by David Rieff, The New Republic, April 12, 2006.

• Living people
• New York Times people
• George Polk Award recipients
• American journalists