Paul Yingling is a retired United States Army colonel, best known for a 2007 article in Armed Forces Journal that criticized senior military leadership for failures during the occupation of Iraq.
[1] Yingling served three tours in the Iraq War, then retired from the Army in late 2011 to teach high school social studies.
As he left, Yingling published an opinion piece in the Washington Post, expressing frustration with senior leadership in trying to reform an entrenched bureaucracy.
[1] The Washington Post described it as "a blistering attack on U.S. generals" and a signal of the "public emergence of a split inside the military between younger, mid-career officers and the top brass".
[5] He likened Iraq to the Vietnam War: "for the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency".