Not being on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s trip to the Middle East this week, I couldn’t ask him whether this is related to the expected request from Gen. Stanley McChrystal for more troops for Afghanistan, but, you know, the mind wanders:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
Eli Lake at The Washington Times builds on yesterday’s comments from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that U.S. troops might be welcome in some form in Iraq after the 2011 deadline for their withdrawal set in the Status of Forces Agreement. He quotes Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional More…
Usually when a journalist says “this is a thoughtful piece of writing” what s/he means is “this is a well-expressed recapitulation of things I already believe,” but, really, in the straightforward sense, this is a thoughtful piece of writing from a Marine stationed near Fallujah, brought to us by More…
Milestones don’t always mark what they should. Tomorrow all these things are true: there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; procedures and circumstances and contingencies pertain whereby urban security will still be a U.S. mission; there is a U.S. combat mission, by binding diplomatic accord, for an additional 13 More…
Although Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, says it’s already happened, as of Wednesday, U.S. combat forces will officially be out of Iraqi towns and cities. There’s going to be a limited number of U.S. forces allowed into the cities for training, equipping and advisory missions, More…
Abu Muqawama’s pseudonymous guest blogger has a good post giving some reasons for not freaking out over the recent spate of high-profile Iraq bombings. S/he counsels that there’s really no good reason to slow down the pace of withdrawal, contending, “what the Iraqis need is more assistance in resolving More…
Yesterday’s Pentagon briefing featured a telling exchange about Iraq between a reporter (whom I think was McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef) and spokesman Geoff Morrell. If the United States is on pace to withdraw from Iraq, the reporter wanted to know, wasn’t the United States declaring victory? Morrell came up with a More…
Small Wars Journal has a copy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s guidance to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force troops on how the Afghanistan war ought to be conducted. It’s reminiscent of Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno’s messages to the troops about counterinsurgency and what the missions in Iraq
Alissa J. Rubin has a great story in The New York Times today about a crucial issue in Iraq (which some wags are starting to call the “Forgotten War”): an upcoming referendum that, if passed, would compel the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq within a More…
Strange as it sounds, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was a strong proponent of President Obama’s decision to reverse course and argue in court that photographs depicting torture of Iraqis by U.S. troops ought to be kept private, according to McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef:
The official said Maliki warned that
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