-Author, radio commentator, and sometime US government agent, Cordesman argues that the US must construct Iraqi military, security, and police forces as an essential element of nation-building and stability, and presents a program for doing so. Most of the book is analysis of the planning and execution of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation and resistance to it. Then he looks at The Iraqi View, the evolving nature of the conflict and the risk of sectarian and ethnic conflict, before laying out his own ideas in the final chapter. —Reference & Research Book News

-Iraqi Security Forces: A Strategy for Success chronicles the initial mistakes and changes of US policy with respect to the creation and training of a competent Iraqi security apparatus. Cordesman highlights the policy changes intiated in June 2004, which aimed to correct these past mistakes and to pave the way for the reduction and eventual withdrawal of Coalition forces from Iraq. The author sets out a number of US policy prescriptions that he believes, if applied consistently and with the necessary resouces, could help to stabilize Iraq. —Middle East Journal

-Cordesman, who holds the Burke Chair in Strategy at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, has produced an analysis of the Iraq war that is well written, thoroughly researched, and objective. The volume describes a rush to war without committing enough military forces, a failure to assess the nature and size of the Iraqi insurgency, and, perhaps most importantly, the failure to react to the wartime collapse of Iraqi military, security, and police forces. The rush to transfer sovereignty brought new problems; an election does not necessarily create a sovereign government, or even a true democracy. In the author's analysis, the US set the stage for a civil war by not adequately recruiting, training, and equipping police and national guard forces. Cordesman has provided a textbook for this and future administrations on how not to conduct a war and occupation; it includes a helpful chronology of events. This work should be required reading for professionals in the field and anyone concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq. Essential. General readers, lower-division undergraduates through practitioners. —Choice