Summer Soldiers

During both World Wars, the British army invaded Iraq. The WWII intervention was very specifically a regime-changing project. Here is a timeline of World War I battles on the "Mesopotamian Front." This Navy paper on the World War II campaign against Prime Minister Rashid Ali el Gailani was written in December with an eye on the current war drive, and has the usual virtues and vices of a study seeking to draw historical insight about a contemporary situation. Both are worth looking at, and both give the lie to hawks who insist that we can't delay the war because of the summer heat: Battles were fought throughout the spring and summer of both 1915 and 1916, and the 1941 operation began in May. My touch? to critics who say chemical warfare suits change the equation: The British had to wear wool underpants. And they did it for England, by God!