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

• Author: Evans, David

On March 3, 1991, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf met a delegation of Iraqi generals over coffee and bottled water in a dust-blown tent at Safwan, a junction just north of the Kuwaiti border, to negotiate the terms of the peace.

Kuwait was liberated. The Gulf War was over. One of the Iraqi generals, Lt. General Sultan Hashim Ahmad, wanted the U.S. Army divisions sitting triumphantly astride Highway 8 to withdraw from Iraqi territory.

"We are sure you know how much we paid ... casualty-wise, I mean," Ahmad said, suggesting that Schwarzkopf should be flexible given the high price the Iraqis paid in blood.

"We are here to talk about now," Schwarzkopf interjected.

"I have just mentioned this for history," Ahmad replied.

Schwarzkopf said dismissively, "History will be written long after you and I are gone."

With publication of The Generals' War on the anniversary month of the war's beginning in January 1991, the history that Schwarzkopf said would be written long after he and the Iraqi generals were gone already is starting to come out. Michael Gordon, chief defense correspondent for The New York Times, and retired Marine Corps Lt. General Bernard Trainor tell a thoroughly researched tale, using many heretofore secret documents and drawing on extensive personal interviews with virtually all of the top American generals. The picture that emerges, to draw on Schwarzkopf's own football analogy for the campaign, was a "Hail Mary" that had the other team in retreat, but didn't score a touchdown.

The Republican Guard divisions, which Schwarzkopf had sworn from the beginning were to be destroyed utterly, instead escaped. Battered and mauled, they streamed north out of Kuwait. These linchpins to Saddam Hussein's power were able to reorganize and crush the Shiite and Kurdish rebellions that broke out in the immediate aftermath of the war. Indeed, some of those same Iraqi divisions would threaten a second advance into Kuwait in 1994, prompting a hasty American troop deployment into Kuwait to deter them. U.S. News & World Report had it right shortly after the war when it published a cover story on the Desert Storm campaign titled "Triumph Without Victory." The American-led coalition forces had executed a stunning 100-hour blitzkrieg to liberate Kuwait. The triumph is indisputable. The victory, though, was fleeting.

Now, with the publication of this superb and gripping history, we have a much better appreciation for the achievements and failures of American generalship in...