Thomas E. Ricks, the nation’s best-known defense correspondent, writes in a book out this week that many Iraq veterans believe the U.S. is likely to have “soldiers in combat in Iraq until at least 2015 – which would put us now at about the midpoint of the conflict.”

That would mean American forces would remain in danger past President Obama’s terms, into his second term if he wins reelection or the 45th presidency if he doesn’t.

Ricks, author of the bestselling “Fiasco,” offers that grim forecast in a new book being published Tuesday, “The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008” (394 pages, The Penguin Press, $27.95).