War to Outlast Obama?

The Iraq war isn’t winding down—in fact, it’s only halfway over, according to a new book out this week. In The Gamble, defense correspondent Thomas Ricks writes that many Iraq veterans expect the US to have “soldiers in combat in Iraq until at least 2015— which would put us now at about the midpoint of the conflict.” The grim forecast means the war would last past Obama’s first term, and well into his second, if he wins re-election. Ricks also predicts Obama and his generals “eventually will settle on what one Obama adviser calls ‘a sustainable presence’—and that that smaller force will be in Iraq for many years.” A lot of Americans “incorrectly think the war is over,” Ricks told David Gregory today on Meet the Press. “We may be only halfway through this thing.”