Progress in Iraq

[yesdachi]

I am sure I don’t know all the details of the training process but for the love of all I hold holy! How can it take so freaking long to train them? What do they need to know? Isn’t our basic training only 6 weeks? Aren’t they already soldiers? I mean they aren’t the marines or anything but were not training them to take over the Middle East, just to protect themselves, right?

Do you know how to fire a gun? Can you follow orders? Ok then, that guy (pointing at a bearded guy with puppet strings attached to a coalition soldier) is in charge. Bu-Bye.

Would they mess everything up if we just left a small force there to “guide” them?

[Dâriûsh]

Progress in Iraq? Isn't that a bit of an Oxymoron?

Not if you’re the Jama'at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad, better known as the Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

[Aurelian]

I'd like to know what happened to the other 2 battalions that were supposed to be ready to act independently. Why were they downgraded?

Oh... I guess I can sort of answer my own question. According to another article on this subject in USA Today (can't link at the moment), the downgrading of those two battalions was due to the US adopting a "new, more demanding standard" to assess readiness.

Just what that standard entails is not discussed, nor why it was felt that the old standard was insufficient.

The article also mentions in passing that Gen. Casey and Rumsfeld: "acknowledged that insurgents had infiltrated Iraqi security forces." But, they played down the significance and Casey said "we don't see it in the way that would render these forces incapable"... whatever that means.

I would think having your forces infiltrated by insurgents would render your forces perhaps not "incapable", but certainly compromised, less capable, and more vulnerable.

Of course, if you remember, during the 2004 debates Bush and Cheney were talking about the 100,000 trained Iraqi security forces that were supposedly already on duty. Yeah, right. Of course, they constantly changed those numbers. One would have assumed that trained Iraqi security forces might be expected to be able to do their jobs independently, but apparently that hasn't been the case.

That USA Today article also mentioned that a lot of Iraqi police aren't even being paid. You'd think that would be a top priority.


Here's a section from the article:

Rice defended Bush's contention during the debate that 100,000 trained Iraqi security forces are on duty, a figure that has been disputed by some Democrats in Congress.

Democratic members of the House Appropriations Committee were quoted by Reuters last week as saying that based on Pentagon documents they had seen, only about 23,000 Iraqi security forces, which include police, border patrolmen and national guard troops, had enough training to be "minimally effective."

"Not one single, solitary Iraqi policeman has completed the 24-week training course on the ground," Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" last month.

Biden said his information came from Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of recruiting and training operations, and Pentagon officials at the time could not say how many police had undergone the training course.

The Pentagon itself has had trouble coming up with a count of trained Iraqi forces. Initial estimates were 206,000, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last month the figure was less than half that.

"We figure we may still have that many people on the rolls. But of the ones that are trained and equipped, the number now looks to be, the latest number -- last week it was 105,000 -- now it looks to be 95,000, that is to say that are trained and equipped," Rumsfeld told the National Press Club on September 10.

That was ONE YEAR AGO. They really don't seem to have accomplished much in the last year.

[Kraxis]

Considering the effect of the police in the British area I would say that it is indeed a sort of progress that numbers are declining.

[Tribesman]

Considering the effect of the police in the British area I would say that it is indeed a sort of progress that numbers are declining.
So the numbers of effective units are declining because they have found that Shia and Sunni arabs are "unreliable" as they may be sympathetic to one of the many militia or insurgent groups .
Which leaves the units that are mainly Pershmerga .
Unfortunately the State Dept identifies former Pershmerga units in the security forces as being responsible for murder , looting , extortion , corruption , extra-judicial killings , torture ....
Thats great , rely on 20% of the population to run the other 80% . Sounds just like Saddam all over again .
But that still doesn't addresss the complete fabrication of total numbers of personell .

Surely someone of the "war is good" or "we are making progress" persuation can make a post to explain it all .

[Navaros]

i've heard that the USA has confimed that soldiers are planning to stay there for at least 6 more years. i guess stories like that don't get all that much press though

anyhow this whole "progress in Iraq" thing is hilarious in the sense that Iraq should be irrelevant to USA. Iraq was not USA's problem until the USA made it into a problem.

USA has no legitimate business being in Iraq, and now they're paying the price for forcing themselves into a place where they're not wanted. i don't feel sorry for them.

[Samurai Waki]

Things aren't looking too good in the states either. Protests are starting to launch everywhere. There has been a protest here with something like 6000 people that have been annoying people consitantly by blocking traffic and causing a general disruption is peoples social life. Pretty soon people are going to be like "hell, I'm sick of this constant disruption, just bring the boys in Iraq home already!"