Articles
How the Iraq War Got Off on the Wrong Foot
It’s always fascinating to listen to an eyewitness to history recount what was happening when the rest of us were relying on press releases and government spin...
The Great Wall of Qatar
The U.S. military has been routinely flying warplanes out of Qatar’s al Udied air base, just west of the Gulf state’s capital of Qatar, since 1991’s Persian Gulf...
What Bush Got Right On Iraq–And What Obama Can Learn From It
Before pulling the trigger on Iran, the U.S. should review how Bush nearly drove Saddam Hussein from power without an invasion
What Iraqis Remember About the U.S. Invasion
The ferocity of the American attack in 2003 took many Iraqis by surprise. Across the country, regime propaganda and media blackouts had made it difficult for...
What Bush Got Right on Iraq — and What Obama Can Learn from It
When George W. Bush became President in January 2001, American policy towards Iraq was in free fall and the United Nations sanctions against Saddam’s regime, in...
The Art of the Possible: Moving Mountains in Afghanistan
Near the end of the summer in 1992, Lt. Gen. Gus Pagonis, the logistical wizard behind the overwhelming coalition victory in the first Gulf War, published a book...
Stormin’ Norman, 1934-2012
For those who came of age during World War II, or post-9/11, the death Thursday of retired Army general H. Norman Schwarzkopf may not be of great moment. But for...
School Daze
A couple of months ago Battleland noted something called the Joint Special Operations University at MacDill Air Force Base...
The Securitization of Instability
Having escaped Iraq after eight years, now mired in the nation’s 12th year in Afghanistan, Americans are probably ready for a book looking at the kind of...
Air Force Capt. Tony McPeak, Over Vietnam
Merrill “Tony” McPeak served as the U.S. Air Force’s 14th chief of staff – its top officer – from 1990 to 1994. A fighter pilot — who flew over Vietnam, in war,...
Drone Worrier
On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War – as hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops streamed toward Iraq-occupied Kuwait – a U.S. Army officer remarked how much easier all...
Watch: Disabled Veteran Does the Impossible
The last month has been one of inspiration. First, a first-grader without hands wins a penmanship contest, next a paralyzed woman pulls off a marathon with the...
Highway (of Death) Robbery
You may recall the infamous “Highway of Death,” that stretch of six-lane Highway 80 from Kuwait City into Iraq and on toward Basra. The U.S. military rained...
Depleted Uranium: Getting a 2nd Opinion
Remember the controversy over the Pentagon’s armor-killing depleted-uranium rounds that were widely used for the first time in 1991’s Gulf War? Many troops...
Author Chat: War in Pre-Revolutionary America
Eliot Cohen is one of those Washington, D.C., polymaths who, when he's not professing at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is putting...
"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Vet"
The Department of Veterans Affairs released a study Friday into how to care for veterans...of 1991's Gulf War, notorious for a spate of ailments lumped together...
Iraq: Like a Serpent's Tooth
We noted on Monday that there seem to be no plans for the Iraqi government to award U.S. troops a medal for ridding its nation of Saddam Hussein (Kuwait and...
One in Three
Thirty-four percent, to be precise. That’s how many veterans believe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new and dispiriting –...
