War Post is both a research source for soldiers' letters and documents from Iraq and a site for imaginative, contemporary war commentary - "war talk," a phrase from one of Amitava Kumar's English courses at Vassar.
Modern Iraq was created after the British-led Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force (1914-1918) took eventual control of the vilayets of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, clearing the way for the transfer of "Mesopotamia" from Ottoman provinces to a British-mandated nation state in 1922. The letters of Indian soldiers who made up much of the ranks of the MEP are contrasted on War Post with the voices (letters, e-mails, blogs, books) of American soldiers in Iraq today, in an effort to ground the current war in the history of the region and in the experiences and narratives of foreign soldiers fighting there, 90 years apart.