Marine Corps Gazette – The author reports on the progress Marines are making in the troubled Al Anbar Province in Iraq. Despite the violence, progress is being made in training Iraqis and restoring security. Unfortunately, these events are underreported by the mainstream media. (PDF format)
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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks writes that as fighting in Iraq enters its fifth year, an increasing number of experts in foreign policy and national strategy are arguing that the biggest difference between the Vietnam and Iraq wars may be that the Iraq war will inflict greater damage to U.S. interests than Vietnam did.
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Washington Post – An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there.

“America’s generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq,” charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. “The intellectual and moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals.”

Read the article: Armed Forces Journal – A failure in generalship.
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Meet the Press – General Zinni comments on the current situation in Iraq and the Central Command area of responsibility.
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Washington Post – The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job.
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Defense News – Sean Naylor analyzes retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey’s recent report on Iraq.
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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks writes that there are two Iraq wars being waged, according to military officers on the ground and defense experts: the one fought in the streets of Baghdad, and the war as it is perceived in Washington.
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Washington Post – David Ignatius’ exit interview with General Abizaid of CENTCOM.
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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks says eager to appear resolute and reluctant to provide fodder for skeptics, U.S. officials rebuff questions about failure with a mix of optimism and evasion.
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Esquire – If official Washington has trouble learning from its mistakes, the generals fighting the war in Iraq have no such luxury. And there are many lessons to learn. Thomas P.M. Barnett provides us with an interesting look at the generals???
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Defense and the National Interest – Martin van Creveld’s latest proposal for the Middle East.
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Washington Post – Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals — including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders — in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.
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UPI – A month before the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a team of military and Middle East experts at the Army War College published a 60-page booklet that laid out in detail the problems the U.S. military would likely encounter and how to mitigate them.

Here is the report: Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario.
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The Chronicle – In a speech highly critical of the war in Iraq, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni told a packed house at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy that they must decisively choose a course of action in that conflict.
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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks writes that the battle for Baghdad will start in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods chosen by military strategists as being the least likely to offer stiff resistance, raising the odds of early success, according to military planners and officials familiar with the thinking of the incoming Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus.
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Washington Post – Another look at Admiral William J. Fallon, the new nominee to head Central Command.
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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks writes that President Bush’s plan to send tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements to Baghdad to jointly confront Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias is likely to touch off a more dangerous phase of the war, featuring months of fighting in the streets of the Iraqi capital, current and former military officials warned.
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Daily Telegraph – A look at the underlying historical British influence on President Bush’s new surge strategy for Iraq.

The Times – New US general will copy British ‘softly-softly’ style.

Washington Post – Lessons for One Last Try.
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Esquire – Lt. General David Petraeus is set to take over in Iraq. Here, is an excerpt from Thomas P.M. Barnett’s March 2006 profile of Barnett.
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Washington Post – Rick Atkinson updates us on General Petraeus, the new US Army ground commander in Iraq. He is widely seen as last, best hope for region.
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Daily Telegraph – John Keegan argues in favor of increasing American troop numbers in Iraq.
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Washington Post – A look at the retirement of General John Abizaid, CENTCOM commander.
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Q and A – Brian Lamb interviews the Former Director, Reconstruction & Humanitarian Efforts in Iraq, 2003.
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Washington Post – The Iraq Study Group reports in???

Read the whole report: The Iraq Study Group Report (PDF format).
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New York Times – Michael Gordon describes General Zinni’s latest recommendations on Iraq.

Read General Zinni’s plan here: World Security Institute – The Future for Iraq (PDF format)
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