During the war in Iraq, young Army and Marine captains have become American viceroys, officers with large sectors to run and near-autonomy to do it. In military parlance, they are the “ground-owners.” In practice, they are power brokers.

Many in the military believe that these captains are the linchpins in the American strategy for success in Iraq, but as the war continues into its sixth year the military has been losing them in large numbers — at a time when it says it needs thousands more.

Most of these captains have extensive combat experience and are regarded as the military’s future leaders. They’re exactly the men the military most wants. But corporate America wants them too. And the hardships of repeated tours are taking their toll, tilting them back toward civilian life and possibly complicating the future course of the war.

From the archive:

The Army will need this lieutenant 20 years from now when he could be a colonel, or 30 years from now when he could have four stars on his collar. But I doubt he will be in uniform long enough to make captain.

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

Sovereigns of All They’re Assigned, Captains Have Many Missions to Oversee

When Americans look back years from now, what will shame us most is that our country abandoned a bedrock principle of civilized nations: that torture is without exception wrong.

Get familiar with the Standard Operating Procedure.

No Torture. No Exceptions.

Perhaps nothing has hurt America's standing in the world so much recently as the media stories related to Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, secret detention centers abroad, and extraordinary renditions. All are related to interrogation as a means of intelligence collection. Any research team that looks seriously into the topic of interrogation should pay closer attention to this broader picture. Interrogation methods are not just about what works best to gather information; they are also about what can stand the light of day from a moral point of view in the eyes of American citizens and people around the world. For the next iteration, the Intelligence Science Board may wish to have an ethicist on board, and perhaps an expert or two who can look at the wider foreign policy implications that flow from the choices America makes about how to question detainees.

Have you seen Taxi to the Dark Side?

Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art — Central Intelligence Agency

Five years have now passed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney, in Iraq with Sen. John McCain — the presumptive Republican nominee for president — summarized the five years by saying, “If you reflect back on those five years, it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor. We’ve come a long way in five years, and it’s been well worth the effort.” Democratic presidential aspirant Sen. Hillary Clinton called the war a failure.

It is the role of political leaders to make such declarations, not ours. Nevertheless, after five years, it is a moment to reflect less on where we are and more on where we are going.

Stratfor’s War: Five Years Later

Petraeus conceded that some elements of both the Awakening movement and the Mahdi Army may be standing down in order to prepare for the day when the U.S. presence is diminished. "Some of them may be keeping their powder dry," Petraeus said of Mahdi Army members. "Obviously you would expect some of that to happen."

Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress'

The security environment in Iraq continues to improve, supported by limited but important gains on the political, economic and diplomatic fronts. Violence levels have declined since the last report and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are gradually assuming responsibility for maintain- ing law and order and promoting stability. New strides have been taken in reconciliation at the national, provincial and local levels, and the Iraqi economy is growing. However, recent security gains remain fragile, and sustained progress over the long term will depend on Iraq’s ability to address a complex set of issues associated with key political and economic objectives.

Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq (March 2008)

The call to war is often met by young Soldiers who lack an understanding of what they are about to encounter. These young Soldiers must be trained, prepared, and then led in battle by those with experience and understanding—the Noncommissioned Officer Corps. In an effort to preserve the history of the US Army Noncommissioned Officer and to provide future noncommissioned officers with an understanding of the actions necessary to prepare Soldiers and to lead them in war, the US Army Sergeants Major Academy undertook a program to gather and publish the stories of NCOs who had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the papers received were from students of the US Army Sergeants Major Course who had already deployed to either Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom. This work highlights a few of those stories. A wide range of topics have been chosen to allow the reader to understand the preparations, training, and actions needed for NCOs to accomplish their missions.

The work is prepared in two sections: the first we call Stories from Afghanistan and the second, Stories from Iraq. Stories from Iraq is further broken down into “Fighting the Iraqi Army” and “Fighting the Insurgency.” Each story has a brief introduction to provide the reader with a background and setting for the story. Timelines are also provided to assist the reader in following the stories in relation to other events that are taking place during the same time frame. In addition, maps provide the reader with an understanding of where in Afghanistan or Iraq those events occurred.

Long, Hard Road: NCO Experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq

John A. Nagl, who wrote the book on counterinsurgency:

The hard lesson of this tragedy is clear: Foreign forces cannot win a counterinsurgency campaign on their own. In Anbar, I spent at least as much time training and equipping the country's nascent security forces as I did planning and executing raids against insurgents. This indirect approach is the key to winning the long war against al-Qaeda and changing the Middle East for the better.

Iraq has come a long way since the summer of 2004. Anbar is now one of the safest provinces in Iraq, scheduled to be handed over to Iraqi control this month. The Marines stationed there now struggle with boredom as much as with car bombs. The extraordinary success of the 2007 "surge" of troops to Iraq -- or, more precisely, sending additional forces to Iraq and using them in a classic counterinsurgency strategy that combined providing security for the population with reaching out to aggrieved parties -- will echo in the pages of military history. But it is far too early to take a victory lap, and a focus on Iraq that crowded out the other theaters in which the United States is fighting would be a strategic mistake of the first order.

We Can't Win These Wars on Our Own

O'Hanlon et al:

IRAQ’S security turnaround has continued through the winter. The question for 2008 is whether Iraqi security forces can preserve and build on this improvement as they increasingly bear more of the responsibility as the number of American troops declines (and as refugees and internally displaced Iraqis try to return to their homes).

It is far too soon to predict that Iraq is headed for stability or sectarian reconciliation. But it is also clear that those who assert that its politics are totally broken have not kept up with the news.

The State of Iraq: An Update

Apropos of "campaign" finance reform ...

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

You might recall the latest CAP report, which finds that "Iraq is no closer to a sustainable security framework than it was at the start of 2007."

Have you seen No End in Sight?

The $2 Trillion Nightmare