Getty Image

A picture taken with a mobile phone shows uniforms reportedly belonging to Iraqi security forces scattered on the road on June 10, 2014, after hundreds of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched a major assault on the security forces in Mosul, some 370 kms north from the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Some 500,000 Iraqis have fled their homes in Iraq’s second city Mosul after Jihadist militants took control, fearing increased violence, the International Organization for Migration said. AFP PHOTO/STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Today we have news that the Maliki government in Iraq requested US airstrikes against the ISIS insurgent army — a request that was denied.

“Iraqi officials at the highest level said they had requested manned and unmanned U.S. airstrikes this year against ISIS camps in the Jazira desert,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and who visited Baghdad in early March. ISIS is the acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as the militant group is known.

Remember Kenneth M. Pollack? He was the author of The Threatening Storm, a book that played a large part in convincing me in 2003 that the Iraq invasion was the right thing to do, a book I recommended to friends and LGF readers — and a book I now consider one of the most dishonest, insidious pieces of work I’ve ever encountered.

It’s surprising and appalling to see Pollack still being cited as an expert on Iraq, after he was so utterly, disastrously wrong at such an important point in our nation’s history.