Samuel Helfont is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy in the Naval War College Program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University and completed a three-year post-doctoral lectureship at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his books on Iraq, he has written for leading academic journals and for the popular press. He has also served as an intelligence officer in the US Navy and Navy Reserve, is an Iraq War veteran, and completed deployments both afloat and ashore in the Middle East.