The Department of Defense announced yesterday that campaign stars are authorized for wear on the Afghanistan Campaign Medal (ACM) and Iraq Campaign Medal (ICM). That’s no real surprise; the wars have been going on for quite some time and the practice is typical. I was initially authorized two campaign stars for my Southwest Asia Service [...]

I strongly urge you to read the study with the above sub-title, mentioned in this post, a study which I think has been widely misinterpreted in the media and by the blogosphere. IMO the author of the paper, Joseph Collins, does an excellent job of laying out the institutional failures that have brought us to [...]

This morning the Miami Herald published a story quoting a “Pentagon study” that found the situation in Iraq “a major debacle” with the “outcome in doubt”. The story is also being carried by McClatchy, the Herald’s parent company. Obviously, quite a few in the blogosphere have made substantial hay out of the piece. The excellent [...]

Bernard Finel, weighing in on the “Two Iraq Wars” debate, makes an interesting point: The fact is that there are many Islamist insurgencies around the world — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines, etc. All of them are potential locations for AQ to establish a safe haven… indeed, they have [...]

Rusty Shackleford argues that discussions about the Iraq War get clouded with emotional and political baggage surrounding the decision to invade in 2003 and that we can gain clarity by speaking of two Iraq Wars: the successful invasion to topple Saddam’s regime and the post-Saddam nation-building phase. The post-invasion period subjected Iraqis to the tyranny [...]

Another Iraqi unit has fled rather than fought, Michael Gordon reports. A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias. The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led [...]

Jackie Speier, who was sworn in yesterday after a special election to replace the late Tom Lantos, was booed after she turned her introductory speech into a tirade against the war in Iraq. For a few feel-good moments on the floor of the U.S. House today, Jackie Speier basked in bipartisan applause as she was [...]

Phil Carter argues that, while reducing tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan to 12 months from 15, it’s still too long. Far preferable would be the 7-month tours employed by the Marine Corps or the 6-month rotations the Army used for Bosnia and other deployments in the 1990s. This is an extremely long deployment, [...]

We’ll continue to have large numbers of troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future but deployments will be cut to one year, President Bush announced today. President Bush on Thursday ordered an indefinite halt in U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq after July, embracing the key recommendations of his top war commander. Bush said Gen. David [...]

Matthew Yglesias has an important post on the nature of Iranian influence in Iraq, and why our policy towards Iran is only making Iraq worse: Petraeus and Crocker both seem committed to a “blame Iran for problems” approach to their hearings. In this context, it’s worth looking at this in the broader context of US-Iranian [...]

Joe Biden is getting plaudits from the Leftosphere for asking Ryan Crocker a really dumb question in yesterday’s hearings. Here’s the video: The transcript: BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region? CROCKER: Mr. Chairman, al Qaeda is a strategic threat to the [...]

Bernard Finel quips that, “The ‘success’ of the surge is like winning a pie eating contest where is the prize is… more pie.” That’s a good line, regardless of where you stand on Iraq. More seriously, he tries to come up with metrics for defining “success” and observes, We are now precisely back where we [...]

General David Petraeus’ testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today was cautious and somewhat predictable. Key quotes follow with bold emphasis mine in all cases: Since Ambassador Crocker and I appeared before you seven months ago there has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq. Since September, levels of violence and civilian deaths [...]

Wired‘s Danger Room blog has compiled a list of seven questions that they’d like to ask General Petraeus in his Senate testimony today, all of which I think are worth asking. Particularly these: 3. Recent Senate testimony by General William Odom and journalist Nir Rosen presented a portrait of Iraq that is at odds with [...]

Could the Mahdi Army and other key Iraqi “militias” disband? Signs are pointing in that direction. Iraq’s top leadership council issued a call over the weekend: A top leadership council called Saturday on Iraqi parties to disband their militias or risk being barred from taking part in elections and participating in political life. A statement [...]

“Surprising Political Endorsements By U.S. Troops” – ABC News Why not “Government Employees Cannot Participate in Partisan Political Activity”? Or how about government employees are not allowed to state who they support politically? How about government employees are NOT allowed to vote? How about UNION government employees are not allowed to vote? Though the military [...]

Blackfive’s Uncle Jimbo has what purports to be an advanced text of the “opening statement Gen. Petraeus will make tomorrow to Congress.” [UPDATE: It turns out that I've been had and this is just a wishful thinking piece on the part of Jimbo.] As to the progress report itself, he is naturally touting the success [...]

Nouri al-Maliki is doubling down his bets, vowing a Basra-style crackdown in Baghdad. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday he planned to launch more security crackdowns like the one in Basra against “criminal gangs” in Baghdad. Addressing a news conference, he singled out Sadr City and Shula — two Mahdi Army militia strongholds in Baghdad [...]

The body of Staff Sergeant Keith Maupin, the American soldier who was captured and murdered nearly four years ago, has finally been officially identified. Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin’s parents vowed to never let the U.S. Army forget about finding their son. Their efforts included trips to the Pentagon and even meeting with President Bush, but [...]

Six days of Shiite-on-Shiite warfare in Basra appear over after Mahdi militia chief Moktada al-Sadr sued for peace* and the government agreed in a deal brokered by Iran. Whether this gets scored a “win” for Sadr or Prime Minister Maliki will likely vary depending on the predisposition of the evaluator. Based on what we know [...]

Ilan Goldenberg notes that, for all the United States has invested in Iraq — and in propping up Maliki — we’ve gotten very little in return in this particular episode. By most educated guesses (although by no means all) Maliki didn’t bother to seek our input before launching this messy internecine fight with the Shiite [...]

I noted yesterday morning an NPR report that had some members of the Iraqi national army taking off their uniforms and joining with the Mahdi Army. The Times of London‘s James Hider has more details: Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters [...]

Noah Schachtman notes the irony that the U.S. now finds itself on the same “team” with the Iranian government. For more than a year, America’s political and military leaders have been angrily accusing Iran of fueling the violence in Iraq. But, in the battle for Basra, the U.S. suddenly finds itself in the odd position [...]

The Swamp has a good little nugget of information on the current Civil War “eruption of violence” in Southern Iraq between the central government, composed of the pluarality government whose largest members are Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Dawa, and al-Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi. The upshot? One of the causes of the current surge [...]

The Mahdi Army controls Basra and four days of intense fighting there has been punctuated with the bombing of one of Iraq’s two main oil pipelines.* U.S. officials are painting this is a success story. Karim Kadim/Associated Press via NYT The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government [...]

The cease-fire that has kept the main Shiite militia mostly quiet for the past seven months seems to have unraveled. The US blames Iran. The Mahdi Army’s seven-month-long cease-fire appears to have come undone. Rockets fired from the capital’s Shiite district of Sadr City slammed into the Green Zone Tuesday, the second time in three [...]

The Washington Post has a heartbreaking article which might as well be titled “The More Things Change…” regarding our current “progress” in Fallujah: [Col. Faisal Ismail al-]Zobaie, 51, knows the nature of the men in black masks. He is a former insurgent. Now, as the police chief, he has turned against the insurgency, especially al-Qaeda [...]

Matt Yglesias observes that, “one effect of the Iraq War has been to take a lot of cops out of the field fighting crime at home and send them to Iraq as Army Reserve and National Guard members instead. That’s hardly a knock-down argument against the war, but it’s a reminder that these visions of [...]

Taking a page from Christopher Hitchens’ book, Jim Henley admits that he was right on the Iraq War. Predicting ahead of time that a given war is a bad idea isn’t particularly hard, frankly. It’s a bimodal choice (War/No War) and wars are almost always “bad” in some sense that would be defensible down the [...]

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern. Dave Schuler will be hosting tonight, as I’ll be delayed with an Atlantic Council event, but I’ll call in as soon as I can. Alex Knapp and Steve Verdon are tentatively on board as well. We’ll talk [...]

As part of a retrospective commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, Christopher Hitchens admits to having been right all along. He does, however, reject the premise of the question. Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Iraq would have to know that a heavy U.S. involvement in the affairs of that country began [...]

In recognition of the fifth anniversary of the U. S.-led and mostly U. S.-conducted invasion of Iraq and removal of the regime of Saddam Hussein, there have been a number of articles in the New York Times and elsewhere that have an odd sort of synergy to them. For example, there’s this interview from the [...]

General David Petraeus has stated the obvious: Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday. Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said [...]

Jason Campbell, Michael O’Hanlon and Amy Unikewicz say that Brookings has come up with some metrics to measure political progress in Iraq and that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there actually has been some. The most intriguing area of late is the sphere of politics. To track progress, we have established “Brookings benchmarks” — a set [...]

The picture at right, of Iraqi President Talabani Prime Minister Maliki and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, was taken on President Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Iraq, the first ever by an Irenian leader: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed a new era in relations with neighbouring Iraq as he began the first visit by an Iranian leader to Baghdad yesterday. [...]

America’s top military leader is warning about rapid withdrawal from Iraq. The Joint Chiefs chairman has a word of warning to Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: A rapid of withdrawal from Iraq would lead to a “chaotic situation” and would “turnaround the gains we have achieved, and struggled to achieve, and turn them around [...]

The Iraqi military is trading in its AK-47s for shiny new M-16s. In a move that could be the most enduring imprint of U.S. influence in the Arab world, American military officials in Baghdad have begun a crash program to outfit the entire Iraqi army with M-16 rifles. The initiative marks a sharp break for [...]

Anthony Cordesman, a longtime Iraq War skeptic and administration critic, argued in yesterday’s Washington Post that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are “winnable.” It’s a tightly written piece that defies excerpting but here is the crux of it: No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without [...]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the post-Surge drawdown may have to wait. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday endorsed, for the first time, the idea of pausing the drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq this summer. “A brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense,” Gates told reporters after meeting with Gen. David [...]

In a nice little political jujitsu move, Barack Obama managed to attack both Hillary Clinton and John McCain at the same time, by tying them together and tying them both to Bush: It’s time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain is not by nominating someone who [...]

Steve Benen has a thoughtful post arguing that the Bush administration’s current negotiations with the Iraqi government to define our political, economic and security relationship in the coming years “disregards Congress’ role in treaties.” This is an understandable reaction, given the plain language of Article II, Section 2 that the president “shall have Power, by [...]

Steven Taylor isn’t very impressed with the announcement that Iraq’s parliament has finally come to an interim agreement on some minor changes in the national flag. The three stars that represented Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party will be removed, to address the concerns of Iraqi Kurds. They have refused to fly the flag since the fall [...]

Much hubbub overnight by a joint Center for Public Integrity – Fund for Independence in Journalism study of statements made by Bush administration officials in their attempt to sell the Iraq War. AP/YahooNews: Study: False statements preceded war A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds [...]

One of my Atlantic Council colleagues forwards a report that David Petraeus is being considered for the Supreme Allied Commander post. A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious [...]

The good guys “own the streets” in Baghdad. About 75% of Baghdad’s neighborhoods are now secure, a dramatic increase from 8% a year ago when President Bush ordered more troops to the capital, U.S. military figures show. The military classifies 356 of Baghdad’s 474 neighborhoods in the “control” or “retain” category of its four-tier security [...]

The New York Times editorial board makes a rather bizarre argument: President Bush is discussing a new agreement with Baghdad that would govern the deployment of American troops in Iraq. With so many Americans adamant about bringing our forces home as soon as possible, a sentiment we strongly share, Mr. Bush must not be allowed [...]

Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qadir has announced that the Iraqi government is far, far away from being able to handle its own security. The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s [...]

Today’s NYT marks the start of the “War Torn” feature, “A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.” The first installment begins with the obligatory gut wrenching anecdotes and then gets to the point: The New [...]

Major Andrew Olmsted, a longtime blogger and Army Reservist, was killed in action yesterday when his unit was ambushed. His Obsidian Wings colleague Hilzoy had the sad honor of posting his final blog missive. Her lead-in: Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to [...]

Matthew Yglesias takes a break from the Iowa caucus madness to point out, quite rightly, that the Surge has been an unambiguous failure. The theory behind the surge was clear. Some people said more troops would bring more security to Iraq. Critics of that idea noted that sending more troops would be logistically unsustainable. Surge [...]