A retired Air Force Academy teacher considers hard lessons from Iraq, and why they matter now

In 2004, Tom Mowle was a political science professor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.  It was early in the Iraq war. The U.S had invaded just the year before. A top general asked for help understanding the landscape in Iraq, and Tom volunteered. A few weeks later, Tom left his desk job and flew to Baghdad. He had no idea what he was getting into. He lost colleagues throughout the war and lived on a base that was frequently under fire.   He revisited those experiences in his new book. It’s called Chaos in the Green Zone: My Time as an Iraq War Strategist. Tom spent more than a decade working on the memoir. He spoke with In The NoCo’s Brad Turner about his account of what went wrong in the Iraq War, and what lessons military leaders might apply as the conflict with Iran continues. Read an excerpt from the book.