In October, Iraqi forces set out to retake Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities and ISIS’s biggest stronghold in the country. It would take them nine months and cost thousands of lives.

Following fallen soldier Joe Montgomery from field to grave.

A sniper’s bullet and a long recovery.

The diary of a Scranton, PA National Guardsmen tasked with guarding the highest profile prisoner in U.S history: a surprisingly amiable Saddam Hussein.

A private contractor tossed U.S. military waste in Iraq and Afghanistan into giant pits and burned it. Now soldiers forced to breathe the toxic fumes are sick or dying—and the government is using faulty science to evade responsibility.

Stuart Redus and Fernando Torres were left for dead.

He was just another coked-up agent (repping the likes of Steven Soderbergh) when he disappeared into Iraq, shooting heaps of footage he would attempt to package into a pro-war documentary. And that was just the beginning.

The daily life of Saddam Hussein.

A former Ohio National Guardsman recalls being dunked on by LeBron James as a teenager — and how the James helped get him through the Iraq War.

“In some ways, joining the military is an act of faith in one’s country—an act of faith that the country will use your life well.”

Paul Bremer was briefly the Bush administration’s point person in Iraq. His decisions would have lasting consequences.

On Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who pushed America to war. Chalabi died on Tuesday at the age of 71.

The search for an Iraq veteran on the brink of suicide.

Visiting with the Christian fighters defending Iraq’s Nineveh Plains.

Three siblings from Chicago ran away to become jihadis. Is it fair to try them as terrorists?

One man’s story.

Even ISIS’s opponents are hard men who understand terror.

What one sergeant says he saw before the alleged suicides of three detainees.

An Islamic State senior commander reveals the terror group’s origins.

An essay on PTSD.

A 2003 essay that foreshadows the emergence of the Islamic State a decade later – an insurgency incited by American policy in Iraq during the early days of the war.

When American and Iraqi soldiers were exposed to leftover chemical munitions from Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, the Pentagon kept silent.

A couple’s only son is killed in Iraq.

The full text of a 20,000-word ebook on the interpreters who worked alongside American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their fates once they were no longer of service.

Published across three consecutive issues and later adapted into the book (and mini-series) Generation Kill, the story of bullets, bombs and a Marine platoon at war in Iraq.