%0 Journal Article %T POLICY LESSONS FROM AN UNEXPECTED SOURCE %A Peter Vale %J Scientia Militaria : South African Journal of Military Studies %D 2011 %I Stellenbosch University %R 10.5787/36-2-54 %X Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. (2008), The Three Trillion Dollar War. The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. London: Penguin. 311 pages. In April 2008, Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the US was ˇ°pretty much clueless on counterinsurgencyˇ± during the first year of the Iraq War. This confession says much about the ongoing war in that country. At that time, it will be remembered, Wolfowitz was the US Deputy Secretary for Defence and together with his boss, the then Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was a leading ˇ°Neo-Conˇ± (Neo- Conservative) ¨C as this ever more notorious thread of American foreign policy thinking has been called. Six years on ¨C and well over a million Americans and Iraqis dead ¨C the truth is, at last, seeping through about the invasion of Iraq, its immediate aftermath and the drawn-out war. %U http://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/54