Graeme Lamb

Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Cameron Maxwell Lamb, KBE, CMG, DSO (born 21 May 1953) is a retired British Army officer.

Educated at Rannoch School and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Lamb was commissioned into the Queen's Own Highlanders as a second lieutenant on 8 March 1973.

[24] He stepped down as Colonel Commandant of the Small Arms School Corps on 13 November 2009,[25] and officially retired from the British Army the following day, retaining a commission in the Reserve of Officers.

[27] Lamb serves as a "special adviser" to strategic advisory firm G3 and as director to private military company Aegis Defence Services.

This led to allegations that Lamb may have been paid to praise Bahrain's Al Khalifa regime in public comments and written columns during the Bahraini uprising.

[32] As part of limited war, Lamb has emphasised the importance of precision in the use of force; he is cited as inventing the "inverse ink-spot", which reverses the traditional ink- or oil-spot approach to counter-insurgency by attacking the middle-ranks of an insurgency movement.

[34] Other phrases associated with Lamb include the terms "reconcilable" and "irreconcilable", as more complex alternatives to "enemy" or "insurgent";[35] and the concept of a "squeeze box" to describe the effect of the pressure on ordinary Iraqis from extremists on both sides of the Shi'a and Sunni divide.

Lamb is quoted as suggesting that the timing of his strategic engagement initiative in Iraq was critical, stating that if "we tried to do it in mid-2004, it would have crashed and burned... [b]ecause at the end of the day, people hadn’t exercised their revenge.

[34] Interviews in 2009 with Lamb have led to him being labelled as a pragmatist in terms of tribal engagement; he has noted that "...given the difficulties we were facing, the absolute inability of the Iraqis to cope themselves, and a violent insurgency that was approaching the tipping point, we really didn't feel we had much choice.