Coalition of the Shilling

By Nathan Hodge
The Nation
Mar. 13, 2010

On February 25 journalist Thomas Ricks published an important scoop on his blog at ForeignPolicy.com: Army Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, had requested keeping a brigade in northern Iraq beyond President Obama's deadline for the withdrawal of combat forces. The timing of the story was intriguing. Just two days earlier, Ricks had published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for US troops to remain in Iraq long term. "I think leaders in both countries may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come," he wrote. The op-ed coincided with a policy brief by Ricks issued by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the Washington think tank where he is a senior fellow.

Ricks, a longtime military correspondent for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and author of the bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, had been a prominent critic of US policy in Iraq. Recently on his blog, he called the decision to invade "one of the biggest blunders in American history." But his op-ed, along with the rollout of the policy brief and the news story, was selling the idea of a long stay in Iraq.

CNAS, like most think tanks, bills itself as "independent and nonpartisan"; its leadership says that it takes no positions as an institution. But it played a key role in selling the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and now it could help prepare the ground for the president to reverse course on Iraq and keep a large force in the country.

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