This is a great Occasional paper. For pro-military and or conservatives it may not be what you want to hear but it is based on fact and apparently well reasearched and documented; coming from the War College we should expect as much. In true military fashion, it is an honest evaluation of the Iraq invasion and provides great levels of detail on the plans and rationale leading to the war as well as its' prosecution. I particularly like this segement of text:

"To date, the war in Iraq is a classic case of failure to adopt and adapt
prudent courses of action that balance ends, ways, and means. After the
major combat operation, U.S. policy has been insolvent, with inadequate
means for pursuing ambitious ends. It is also a case where the perceived
illegitimacy of our policy has led the United States to bear a disproportionate
share of the war’s burden. U.S. efforts in Iraq stand in stark
contrast to the war in Afghanistan, where, to the surprise of many, U.S.
friends and allies have recently taken up a larger share of the burden of
that conflict. Afghanistan has become the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s
(NATO’s) war, but the war in Iraq has increasingly become only a
U.S. and Iraqi struggle. The British drawdown in Basra in the summer of
2007 heightened the isolation of the U.S. and Iraqi governments."

The author is very critical of "policy" rather than the executors of the policy, the military. I agree with the failure to adopt and adapt at the national level. At the operational level and below I think our units are doing this very thing; granted it took a while. At any rate this is a great analytical paper that really cause you to think and likely reevaluate your stance on the situation in Iraq.