“David Petraeus, the former Army general credited with turning the tide against al Qaeda in Iraq more than eight years ago, told a Senate panel the U.S. should increase military support in the Middle East,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “including sending combat advisers into Iraq, significantly deepening Washington’s role there.”  

“Mr. Petraeus, now working for a private-equity firm in New York, recommended the U.S. increase support for the Iraqi Security Forces, Sunni tribal forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, to include embedding American advisers there. He also believes the U.S. should deploy American ground spotters known as joint tactical air controllers to coordinate coalition airstrikes.”  

“Those two initiatives alone could require as many as 10,000 American troops—more than twice the 3,500 troops who now operate in relative safety ‘inside the wire’ on U.S. bases and not on the battlefield… Mr. Petraeus, who became director of the Central Intelligence Agency before resigning in disgrace after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, hasn’t testified on Capitol Hill since leaving government in 2012. But he returned to a familiar role, testifying on Capitol Hill and telling the mostly sympathetic audience of the Senate Armed Services Committee that while the current policy has had some success, more needed to be done to defeat Islamic State. Mr. Petraeus first apologized for the indiscretions that led to his forced resignation.”