If you are interested in military issues you will be fascinated by yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) report that Lt. Col. John Nagl, who wrote an influential counterinsurgency book: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, was assigned to be the third-highest-ranking officer in a 700-soldier battalion in Iraq. He also played a central role in opening an officer training school for Americans in Iraq that uses his book.
I just recently learned that American forces in Iraq have no access to alcohol in deference to Muslims. We have never fought without alcohol before. The report by Max Boot also says that nearly all our troops have taken up cigarettes.