Instead of torrid posting, low and slow. And instead of your typical end-of-day link roundup, we’re doing it in the morning!

Eli Lake is in Baghdad, and finds that the Iraqi military, unsurprisingly, wants to remain a long-term client of its U.S. counterparts.

Here’s my pregame McChrystal/Eikenberry overview: why these are not the Petraeus hearings.

Even so, Robert Gates makes an unexpected Afghanistan trip, knowing better than to be in Washington to comment on the hearings.

Julian “Not The Novelist” Barnes writes the only counter-conventional-wisdom Afghanistan-review tick-tock.