Honor the Fallen

Remember Me



USASOC, Families honor memory of fallen SOF Soldiers
Army Special Operations honors fallen heroes with new Memorial Wall
Memorial Day: What you can do (CNN)

Memorial Flags at Arlington Cemetery



Fm 7-21-13 :: Appendix C :: Section III- Memorial Ceremony

Memorial ceremonies are patriotic tributes to deceased soldiers....

In most cases, the unit prepares a program that may include a biographical summary of the deceased soldier with mention of awards and decorations. The following elements are commonly part of a memorial ceremony:

• Prelude (often suitable music).
• Posting of the Colors.
• National Anthem.
• Invocation.
• Memorial Tribute (e.g., remarks by unit commander or a friend of the deceased).
• Scripture Reading.
• Hymn or other special music.
• Meditation (quiet moment for attendees to reflect).
• Benediction.
• Last Roll Call. This is a final tribute paid by soldiers to their fallen comrade. It has its origin in the accountability roll call conducted by the unit First Sergeant following combat. Although sometimes painful to listen through, the Last Roll is called with the conviction held by soldiers that all unit members will be accounted for, and none will ever be forgotten.
• Firing of rifle volleys.
• Taps.

Iraq: Complexify vs. Simplify then Exaggerate

The situation in Iraq is incredibly complex -- and the products of the ‘Surge’ are far too fragile to survive a Coalition drawdown (Part 1 of 2)

Stop Complaining ... Support Michael Yon!

Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn’t they?
...
It’s easy to complain about the state of mainstream media coverage of the War in Iraq. Now, it’s also easy to do something concrete to improve it.

To continue reading, click here.

Interagency Unity of Effort: Goldwater-Nichols II

LTG (Ret.) Sanchez's keynote speech at the 6th annual Military Reporters & Editors (MRE) conference has been badly reported in the news. I've read the MRE transcript and watched the C-SPAN video. The transcript is pretty good, but the video is much, much better. The MRE transcript misses some of Sanchez's speech and has none of the Q&A. The C-SPAN video is an hour long, but you don't need to watch the first 8 1/2 minutes or the last four minutes.

I recommend the video, it is worth at least 48 minutes of your time. I also recommend you start the download, hit pause on the Real player (the video continues to download) and come back when it's all downloaded. Forward the scroll bar to about the 08:30 mark and watch when you can get 48 minutes of (mostly) uninterrupted time.

The first 10 minutes of Sanchez's speech is spent criticizing the media. The rest of his speech (12 minutes) is spent criticizing (primarily) the political leadership. The Q&A lasts 26 minutes.

I do want to pull out one part of Sanchez's speech criticizing America's "interagency" leadership (about 27:40 into the video):

Achieving unity of effort in Iraq has been elusive to date primarily because there is no entity that has the authority to direct the actions of our interagency. As I stated before, our National Security Council has been a failure. Furthermore, America's ability to hold the interagency accountable for their failures in this war is non-existent. This must change. We probably need to implement a Goldwaters-like Nichols act for the interagency. As a nation we must recognize that the enemy we face is committed to destroying our way of life. This enemy is arguably more dangerous than any threat we faced in the twentieth century. Our political leaders must place national security objectives above partisan politics, demand intergency unity of effort, and never again commit America to war without a grand strategy that embraces the basic tenets of the Powell doctrine. [emphasis added]

I've written previously about this in The Surge as Foreign Internal Defense. Specifically, from Joint Publication 3-07.1, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Foreign Internal Defense (FID) (1.6MB pdf):

Ensure Unity of Effort. As a tool of US foreign policy, FID is a national-level program effort that involves numerous USG [US Government] agencies that may play a dominant role in providing the content of FID plans. Planning must coordinate an integrated theater effort that is joint, interagency, and multinational in order to reduce inefficiencies and enhance strategy in support of FID programs. An interagency political-military plan that provides a means for achieving unity of effort among USG agencies is described in Appendix D, Illustrative Interagency Political-Military Plan for Foreign Internal Defense.

How long, how many more times, will we kick the "new Goldwaters-Nichols Act" for "interagency jointness" down the road?

Let's review, shall we?

From a military perspective, Joint Pub 3-08 Vols I & II (pdf), Interagency Coordination During Joint Operations, describe what agencies are involved and what they do. The National Defense University has an html excerpt online from the 1996 editions of JP 3-08 listing the agencies. Both pubs were updated and republished in March 2006.

In May 1997, President Clinton promulgated Presidential Decision Directive 56: Managing Complex Contingency Operations. Read it. It further defined interagency planning and coordination for "complex contingency operations."

In 1998, Mark Walsh and Micheal J. Harwood published a good article in Parameters titled Complex Emergencies: Under New Management, which further describes interagency coordination during "complex emergencies," "complex contingency operations" and Clinton's PDD-56.

In December 1999, Rowan Scarborough reported for the Washington Times:

"NSC not stepping forward in leadership role," states the study conducted by A.B. Technologies in Alexandria for the Joint Chiefs of Staff....

The documents, dated November, say none of the heads of the military's postgraduate schools, such as the National Defense University, is "directly engaged in the training effort."

What's more, most agencies told the consultants they have no role in carrying out PDD 56, when in fact they do.

"There are no agency accountability checks to see what has been done, who has done it," the report says.

The report presents the ironic situation of the NSC, which had the lead in carrying out PDD 56, not following a directive sent out by the president it advises.

Moreover, PDD 56 was largely ignored by an administration that has sent American troops on a record number of so-called "contingencies" on foreign soil. The missions have included peacekeeping in Somalia, Haiti, East Timor and Bosnia, as well as air strikes on targets in Iraq, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Serbia.

On February 13, 2001, the Bush administration promulgated National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 1, Organization of the National Security Council System. During Bush's first term, the two names most responsible for interagency coordination concerning Iraq were Condoleezza Rice as the National Security Advisor and Elliot Abrams as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the NSC Policy Coordination Committee for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations and later as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the NSC Policy Coordination Committee for Near East and North African Affairs.

The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century began a comprehensive review of America's national security in July 1998 and has published 3 volumes. The third volume, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change (pdf), was published February 15, 2001. This is a 156-page report, but I highly recommend at least reading the 10-page Executive Summary. You might also be interested in reviewing the 50 recommendations in Appendix 1:

This appendix lists all of the Phase III Report’s major recommendations in order of
their presentation. The recommendations are numbered sequentially and grouped by Section. The page on which the recommendation appears in the report is noted in the box. Those recommendations in red type indicate recommendations on which Congressional action is required for implementation. Those in blue type can be implemented by Executive Order. Those in green type can be implemented by the head of an Executive Branch department or agency, or by the Congressional leadership, as appropriate.

Also in 2001, the National Defense University was funded "to develop and conduct an interagency training program." This became the Interagency Transformation, Education, and After-Action Review (ITEA) Program. I recommend visiting their website. There is a lot of good information there, and the foundation for developing training for a "National Security Service Corps." There is also a good set of high-level briefing slides (ppt) on NSPD-1 there.

The Center for Strategic & International Studies has also published two volumes under its
Beyond Goldwater-Nichols effort:

Beyond Goldwater-Nichols (BG-N) is a three-phased effort to explore the next era of defense reform. Its primary goal is to develop an integrated set of practical and actionable recommended reforms for organizing both the U.S. military and national security apparatus to meet 21st century challenges. As part of its outreach to build the case for necessary reforms, the BG-N study team serves as an honest broker among the various stakeholders, including between and among the Defense Department (DoD), the State Department, the White House, and the Congress, as well as among the various parties in DoD....

The BG-N study team released the Phase 1 Final Report in March 2004, in which a number of areas were addressed, including: reassessing the civilian, joint, and service balance; building a strategy-driven, more efficient resource allocation process; strengthening the cadre of national security and defense civilians; improving DoD's and the U.S. government’s ability to conduct interagency and combined operations; and more. Phase 2 of the BG-N study was released in July 2005. With seven working groups this phase tackles a slate of issues, including: capabilities for 21st century missions; the regional and functional command structures; the U.S. government’s design in light of 21st century challenges; the defense acquisition process; the commercial-like defense agencies; joint officer management and professional military education; and new domains of warfare.

"On August 5, 2004, Secretary Powell announced the creation of the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) to enhance our nation's institutional capacity to respond to crises involving failing, failed, and post-conflict states and complex emergencies [link added]." Under the S/CRS is the S/CRS Inter-Agency Team.

On December 7, 2005, the Bush administration promulgated NSPD-44, Mananagement of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization. This makes the State Department the "focal point":

(i) to coordinate and strengthen efforts of the United States Government to prepare, plan for, and conduct reconstruction and stabilization assistance and related activities in a range of situations that require the response capabilities of multiple United States Government entities and (ii) to harmonize such efforts with U.S. military plans and operations.

and so on ...

The "interagency process" needs to be legislated and funded, for the same reasons that the "joint process" in the military needed the Goldwater-Nichols Act. There's been a significant amount of research and effort in this area over the last decade. The Department of Homeland Security has statutory interagency responsibility (and accountability) for domestic operations.

What department or equivalent "unified commander" in the field is accountable for "interagency jointness" for all the other operations?

Other References:
National Defense University bibliography on Interagency Coordination
U.S. Military Operations in Iraq: Planning, Combat and Occupation (April 26, 2006)
OIF Phase IV: A Planner's Reply to Brigadier Aylwin-Foster (March-April 2006)
Phase IV Operations: Where Wars are Really Won (May - June 2005)
Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (November 12, 2003)

Previous:
The Surge as Stabilty and Support
The Surge as Foreign Internal Defense
Would Sun Tzu Surge?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Iraq v2.0

Sensationalizing Suicide

Suicide's back in the news. Do you think Greg Mitchell has ever read anything from the Dart Center or American Foundation for Suicide Prevention about covering suicide? Either he hasn't and ignorantly writes about suicide, or he has and callously writes about suicide.

Armed Liberal crunches the numbers and finds ... surprise!! ... military suicides are below the civilian population rates.

Over at Target Rich Environment ... "the civilian suicide rate likely exceeds the 2006 US Army suicide rate (adjusted for demographics)."

I can't remember ever reading a news report on military suicides worth the time spent.

After Desert Storm, 15 years ago, it was studied:

By the close of FY 1992, sixty-four active duty soldiers had committed suicide, a reduction of twelve from FY 1991. Even allowing for later adjustments due to changes in the originally reported cause of death, the number of active duty suicides in the 1992 calendar year was 87, compared to 102 for 1991. The ratio of suicides per 100,000 soldiers was 14.5 for 1992, a slight decrease from the 14.6 rate in 1991. By way of comparison, the civilian suicide rate for roughly the same age group (20-34) was 22-25/100,000. Psychological autopsies of soldier suicides did not indicate that downsizing or changes in policy played any role in their motivations. Psychologists still attributed suicides, in large part, to failures in personal relationships, alcohol abuse, and financial difficulties.

In Haiti, more than 10 years ago, the media made suicide a big issue. It wasn't.

It was raised as an issue again during the 90s "peace operations".

It's been raised frequently now during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Ever wonder why you don't read frequent stories in the news about suicide among the "creative people":

• The Literary Arts
  Recent studies have shown that poets and writers are four times more likely than others to suffer from affective disorders, particularly manic depression. Dickinson, Eliot, and Poe are among the many poets who suffered from an affective illness. Writers such as Balzac, Conrad, Dickens, Emerson, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Ibsen, Melville, and Tolstoy also suffered from the illness. In many cases, the writer's depression led to suicide: John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.


• The Visual Arts
  Painters, sculptors, and other visual artists have also been afflicted by depressive disorders. Gaugin, Jackson Pollock, Michelangelo, and Georgia O'Keeffe suffered from depression. Van Gogh, Arshile Gorky and Mark Rothko died by suicide. Contemporary designers are plagued by alcohol and drug abuse, which are associated with depression.


• The Musical Arts
  The death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain brought the issue of suicide into the spotlight. But the problem was not new to the music world. Classical composers such as Rachmaninoff, Schumann and Tchaikovsky suffered from affective disorders. Irving Berlin, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and Cole Porter also suffered from depressive illnesses.


• The Theatrical Arts
  For many performing artists, the link between depression and suicide has been complicated by the effects of drug and alcohol abuse. For actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, it remains unclear whether the cause of death was accidental overdose or suicide. Also, the tendency toward depression and suicide often shows up in the children of these performers, suggesting a familial link.

I guess it's because Greg Mitchell doesn't find their suicides "especially tragic" or maybe it's because "the press doesn't know what to do about them."

UPDATE (via Insty): More at OTB and View from the Porch.

UPDATE: kf asks, "Who Has to Try to Kill Themselves in this Town to Make the Front Page?"

UPDATE: Sensationalizing Suicide II

Related: Two Suicides, Two Newsrooms, Two Decisions

War Stories: Carter and Beauchamp

Phil Carter wrote about Beauchamp on Slate, his blog and spoke to NPR.

If I understand his point, even if Beauchamp's story is exaggerated and/or fabricated and the New Republic failed its editorial responsibility, he is concerned that true stories about the (uncomfortable/awful) realities of war are not (will not be) heard by the public.

What I found most interesting was Carter's seeming contradiction in his own assessment of the veracity of Beauchamp's anecdotes:

I am deeply skeptical about the veracity of Beauchamp's dispatches, particularly the last one, but disinclined to offer definitive pronouncements at this time....

Among military circles, the reaction to Beauchamp's stories has been mixed. A number of my friends were disturbed by the article, especially what it implied about his unit and its leadership, but very few questioned its basic truth.... Beauchamp's tale was neither believable nor patently untrue on its face.

There were many technical and organizational reasons to be skeptical of Beauchamp's tales. I find it difficult to believe that Carter's military friends were not as skeptical as he was. I'm also surprised that Carter doesn't express support for publicly questioning Beauchamp's tales given his own skepticism.

I was disturbed by Beauchamp's article because of my own deep skepticism that it was true. I would have been more disturbed by the article, and what it implied about Beauchamp's unit and leadership, if it was true.

Beauchamp disturbs me either way. Either his tales about his own disturbing behavior are true or he exaggerated/fabricated them.

It's also one thing to tell exaggerated or fabricated personal and secondhand "war stories" at "unit reunions and American Legion halls" and quite another to publish them publicly as nonfiction to further your personal ambition as an "author."

At the end of his Slate piece, Carter offers advice for journalists attempting to tell the story of what happens in wartime:

... The New Republic erred in granting Beauchamp a pseudonym. In this instance, Beauchamp's personal credibility as a combat infantryman would have bolstered his reports immeasurably.... The lesson here is that in war reporting, as with all reporting, you can certainly use anonymous sources, but only with the proper due diligence.

Granting Beauchamp a pseudonym was not the error. Identifying Beauchamp as a combat infantryman rather than as a soldier would not have "bolstered his reports immeasurably." There is no first and second lesson, as Carter suggests, but just the one: "The lesson here is that in war reporting, as with all reporting, you can certainly use anonymous sources, but only with the proper due diligence."

The error was granting Beauchamp a pseudonym without investing the editorial oversight required of a publication doing so ("proper due diligence"). That's the difference between being an Internet Service Provider for a self-publishing anonymous military blogger in Baghdad, and being the New Republic publishing articles by a pseudonymous "freelance writer and soldier currently serving in Baghdad."

It is also the comparison between "Jeff Gannon" and "Scott Thomas" that the New Republic should want to avoid. "Jeff Gannon" was a pseudonym for a partisan hack getting White House day passes writing for an obscure partisan website. "Scott Thomas" was a pseudonym for a "freelance writer and soldier currently serving in Baghdad" writing a diary for the magazine's print edition and website. If the comparison becomes a distinction without a difference for the American public, the credibility of the New Republic is in real trouble.

Related:
The Army Responds
Why I Serve: An affluent big-city lawyer explains why he did

Previous:
Not Blogging About Beauchamp

Stone and Sharratt Cleared in Haditha Case

All charges dropped against 2 Marines in Haditha killings

All charges were dropped against a captain accused of failing to investigate the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha, the Marine Corps announced Thursday. Also, all charges were dropped against Marine Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, who had been accused of killing three Iraqi brothers in response to a roadside bomb attack in Haditha in 2005.

Statements from Gen. Mattis on the Capt. Stone and LCpl. Sharratt decisions

Murtha: Mum's the word.

Pundit Review:

Making this nightmare even worse, Murtha is the Sharratt’s congressmen. It took Darryl Sharratt 53 phone calls over 18 months to get Murtha on the line.

More at Gateway Pundit and memeorandum.

Previous: Haditha Roundup

Bloggers' Roundtable: PRTs in Iraq

Small Wars Journal
MountainRunner
wretchard at Belmont Club

Transcript is at FNS but not yet at DoD's Bloggers' Roundtable archive.

Related:



Iraq Briefing August 1
Brinkley, Reeker, Bergner Brief Media
Paul Brinkley, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Philip Reeker, US Embassy, Baghdad, and BG Kevin Bergner, Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, speak with reporters in Iraq, August 1, 2007

Securing Iraq: A Pivotal Moment in Time

via SWJ

Movie: No End in Sight

MountainRunner Movie Review: No End in Sight

This is a must see movie even if you have been paying attention. This is not Michael Moore emotional hyperbole but a factual account of failed leadership. If you haven't been paying attention, which is probably not many readers of this blog, Ferguson creates an easily digested synopsis of how America managed to create an insurgency in Iraq.

Intel Dump's Phil Carter Movie Review: "No End in Sight"

Bottom line up front: go see this movie.

James Fallows: 'No End in Sight': Definitely, see this movie

It covers almost exactly the same terrain, including many of the same sources and anecdotes, as did my book Blind Into Baghdad. But rarely have I seen a clearer demonstration of how much more powerful the combination of pictures, sound, music, real-people-talking, etc can be than words on a page.

John Burns on Iraq

Charlie Rose: A conversation about Iraq with John Burns of The New York Times (07/17/2007)

Dance Party in Iraq

Bravo Bulldogs Beware!

Study: Sarin at root of Gulf War syndrome

As benefits administrators, officials and politicians argue the worthiness of studies on Gulf War syndrome, researchers say they have no doubts that they’ve found the root of the problem.

Sarin gas.

And they have advice for as many as 300,000 troops exposed to small doses of sarin in 1991: Don’t use bug spray, don’t smoke and don’t drink alcohol.

Information About Khamisiyah

J. Remodeling Effort: January 1998 – March 2000 (Figure 42)

Comparing each day’s hazard area from March 10 to 13, 1991.

Day 1: March 10, 1991 (Figures 43 – 44)

The 1997 hazard area generally extended in a north-south direction. Based on the wind models, the hazard area extended south-southwest almost 300 kilometers into Saudi Arabia, east of the city of Hafir Al Batin. The 2000 hazard area is divided in two due to slight differences in the wind patterns predicted by the meteorological models but generally follows a north-south axis. The hazard area extends approximately the same distance but to the northwest of Hafir Al Batin. However, the 2000 hazard area extended further to the east and south into Kuwait indicating possible exposure to US personnel not included in the 1997 hazard area. Approximately 70 percent of the 321 kilograms of chemical warfare agent modeled in 2000 had been dispersed into the atmosphere by the end of Day 1.

Figure 43. 1997 Potential hazard area for Day 1: March 10, 1991

Figure 44. 2000 Potential hazard area for Day 1: March 10, 1991

Day 2: March 11, 1991 (Figures 45 – 46)

Both models’ hazard areas have similar shapes. The 1997 model did not consider sunlight effects on the hazard area, but we added these effects for the 2000 modeling at the recommendation of the 1997 peer review panel. For the 2000 hazard area, the dispersion modeling assumed ultraviolet light from sunlight decayed the chemical warfare agent and thus reduced the size of the 2000 hazard area. Improved weather models reflected a shift in the wind to the south, which kept the 2000 hazard area mainly to the north and west of King Kalid Military City (KKMC), unlike the 1997 hazard area, which included KKMC and a much larger area to the west. Later nerve agent emissions evaporating from the soaked wood and soil in the Pit generated the four small hazard areas in the vicinity of Al Bussayyah and around Khamisiyah in the 2000 model. Approximately 89 percent of the 321 kilograms of the chemical warfare agent modeled in 2000 had dispersed into the atmosphere by the end of Day 2.

Figure 45. 1997 Potential hazard area for Day 2: March 11, 1991

Figure 46. 2000 Potential hazard area for Day 2: March 11, 1991

Distinct Army & Air Force Units in Khamisiyah 2000 Hazard Area
March 10-13, 1991

Germany

Company A, 1st Signal Battalion

Company B, 1st Signal Battalion

LTG Martin Dempsey on Iraq

More Art Than Science

Q: You are scheduled to testify soon before a skeptical, Democratic-controlled Congress. How will you characterize progress in standing up Iraqi Security Forces after nearly two years year in this country?

Dempsey: If Congress allows me to articulate the progress we have made across the entire institution of the ISF, and not just focus on one [measurement] of violence or a particular suicide bombing, then I think I can make a case that the Iraqi government and security forces are evolving in a positive direction. But this is an evolution, not a revolution.

House Armed Services Committee

• Subcommittee Chairman Meehan’s Opening Statement
• Audio Transcript

Witnesses:

Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, USA (pdf)

Commander

Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq

C-SPAN video

Questions for Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston

"When the Press Fails...", Jay Rosen comments:

Also, I am going to try to get one or more of the authors to come in and respond to some of this.

That would be cool.

I'd be interested to hear the authors distinguish between the reasons for the press failure pre-9/11 and post-9/11. For example, from the 23rd Annual Ralph McGill Lecture (pdf):

The challenge for newspapers is staying focused in the days ahead, as the war on terror ebbs and flows, and the natural longing for normalcy is accompanied by a longing for a return to synthetic news. We would do our readers--and all the citizens of this great democracy--a grave disservice if we fail to cover the news that matters.

After all, the United States might have been better prepared for the terrorist attacks of September 11 if the press had done the job it should have been doing in the last decade.

As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently admitted, he ignored pleas from officials last year to write efforts to combat terrorism.

and the 2004 Knight Lecture:

Remnick observed that for a decade or more after the collapse of communism, American mainstream journalism took "a triumphal nap, a vacation from sufficient awareness" about the tensions that were building in the Middle East. Throughout the 1990s, the evening news was evolving into "a kind of nonfiction show-business mill" that churned out "sustained narratives of developing gossip." Indeed, the biggest story of the decade concerned the sexual dalliances of the president of the United States.

How does this criticism of press failure support or contradict the authors' conclusion: "Perhaps the path to reform is too obvious. Let every organization start each day by deciding whether they are reporting events from the standpoint of the people or from the viewpoint of those in power."

I'd also like to know what methods were employed by the authors when conducting their post hoc analysis of this press failure to guard against confirmation bias and historian's fallacy/hindsight bias (or reverse hindsight bias when defending past decisions).

Kanan Makiya

March 24, 2007
Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq

Mr. Morse mentioned the pressure that Hillary Rodham Clinton was facing to apologize for her Senate vote authorizing President Bush to go to war.

Mr. Makiya stared into his glass of red wine. "That’s so Maoist," he said. "People shouldn’t feel the need to apologize. What is there to apologize for?"

March 29, 2007


April 18, 2007
Kanan Makiya: Changing Assumptions on Iraq

Makiya now questions his assumptions in supporting the war. He says the Americans made many mistakes, but the biggest mistakes were made by Iraq's new leaders.

Iraq Briefing

COL Stephen Twitty
23 March 2007

Did you ever have this feeling ...

... like everything is going great, but something's going to happen or someone is going to ruin it and it's not going to last?

To Our Americans Serving in Iraq

Iraq v2.0

Iraq 1.0 (March 19, 2003 - April 14, 2003): The "Regime Change" phase. That was our successful invasion of Iraq. Oh, for those glory days.

Iraq 1.1 (April 8, 2003 - May 11, 2003): The "Garner" phase. Major combat is over. Garner wasn't in Baghdad more than a month.

Iraq 1.2 (May 12, 2003 - June 28, 2004): The "Bremer" phase. Commence the insurgency. Saddam's sons killed, Saddam captured. We've got the Baathist bull by the horn and the jihadi tiger by the tail now. Muqtada al-Sadr goes on a rampage. Abu Ghraib.

Iraq 1.3 (June 29, 2004 - June 20, 2005): The "Negroponte" phase. More of the same, but more of it. And not in a good way. The insurgency's been effective in keeping 100,000-150,000 US troops deployed in Iraq. Call-ups, Stop-Loss, and rotations to support that are taking their toll. Wounded and fatalities are building up. The rate of wounded and killed is not high compared to history, but the intensity of the war may be similar to Vietnam.

Iraq 1.4 (June 21, 2005 - February 9, 2007): The "Khalilzad/Casey" phase. Civil War, or not. There were warnings in 2004. There were concerns in 2005 about the growing sectarian violence. In 2006, John Burns returned from Iraq and gave his (in)famous interview on Bill Maher's Real Time. By the end of 2006, especially after the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in the November elections, the "Civil War" debate seemed academic, semantic and moot. "Stay the Course" became "Surge" and Presidential candidates lined up for 2008.

Is it time for Iraq 2.0, the "Khalilzad/Petraeus" "Crocker/Petraeus" phase? I hope so. I'm ready for some good news in Iraq. Even the "So Far So Good" news. I'm ready for Phase 4: Doing it. I'm not looking for sudden success, just steady progress. The kind of progress that justifies answering the question, "If you knew then what you know now, ..." with, "Ask me again in 20 years."

Previous: Iraq v1.4