Yeah, the number of battalions may be down, but we have trained a huge number of militia members and death squad killers so that has to count for something right?

The battalians are probably fighting on their own, and everyone, especially the Iraqi government, has chosen not to notice.

the Iraqi security forces?

There ain't no such thing as any "Iraqi" security forces. There are, instead, various armed Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish units.

We will make no progress unless we clarify this point.

( NOTE: We probably won't make progress anyway, but this clarification would remain an essential ingredient is such progress as may be had.)

Yeah, but two months ago the number had increased from one to ten. Don't be so negative!

Anyone who thinks there is any progress in Iraq should watch this short film taken with a US Army platoon in Baghdad in May.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,2125978,00.html

There are two wars going on in Iraq. The first is between Al Qaeda and the United States. The second is between the various ethnic factions in Iraq. The Bush Administration acknowledges the first war but largely ignores the second. The Democratic Party largely ignores the first war but acknowledges the second. Around ten percent of the violence in Iraq occurs as a result of the first war, but withdraw from Iraq before Al Qaeda is destroyed there would empower Al Qaeda by handing them a victory and boosting their morale. At the same time, staying Iraq until the second war is over would likely amount to staying in Iraq indefinitely, as the Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting each other for over a thousand years.

We need to change course in Iraq, but a timeline for withdraw, or an immediate withdraw, would be a Christmas present to Al Qaeda. Our goal should be not to mediate the civil war in Iraq, but merely focusing on destroying Al Qaeda. Our diplomacy toward the ethnic factions of Iraq should demand not the secularism, feminism, and democracy that our leaders have tried to plant in Iraq with bayonets, but should rather make one demand: the renunciation of Al Qaeda. As long as the ethnic factions refuse to target U.S. troops, and as long as they do not aid Al Qaeda, then it should be no concern of the U.S. how many of those Sunnis and Shiites kill each other.

Thus, we need not a timetable for withdraw, but we need to tie withdraw to the destruction of Al Qaeda’s presence in Iraq to the point that their presence is small enough to be dealt with with the U.S.’s covert assets. In essence, when Iraq’s Al Qaeda presence becomes as dispersed and weak as Morocco’s, for example, the U.S. should withdraw troops.

There are two wars in Iraq. The U.S. must defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq. But no American soldier should be sacrificed in order to determine the outcome of Iraq’s civil war. Thus, we need to neither abandon our mission in Iraq, nor stay the course, but merely narrow the mission in Iraq. The goal should not be the establishment of a peaceful, unified, feminist, capitalist, secular democracy, which has never existed in Iraq, but rather the destruction of Al Qaeda, and withdraw should be tied to the achievement of this goal.

For Bush, one thing never changes in Iraq:
"We're Making Progress."

brian,

You beg the question: Will a complete US withdrawal from Iraq create the conditions for Al Qaeda to flourish?

Provide any evidence/argument for this statement before building your argument upon it.

For more context:

In May, Pace said 10 Iraqi battalions -- military units of 350 to 800 soldiers -- were operating independently and 88 were in the lead in operations but still receiving U.S. support.

So if now six battalions can operate independently, we're talking about fewer than 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, perhaps far fewer. For a different perspective, Bush was talking last year about there being 130 Iraqi battalions fighting in the field. Six out of 130 is less than 5%. That doesn't bode well for success.

Ah, Kevin.

You are playing with statistics, Kevin. Some of these battalions are getting shot as they naturally should be, as they are in a war. This wouls have the tendency to reduce numbers for a short period. But if forces can quickly drop over two months from ten to six, that's not the end of the story. Ten months from now they could shoot back up to twelve or thirteen. One step back, two steps forward. Progress is not always this perfect linear progression toward the ideal. Progress is often messy, sometimes edging back, sometimes meandering toward some less then perfect, but otherwise desirable, goal.

But Kevin expects that if you have 10 battalions then two months later they should have 15 battalions, and anything less is utter failure.

Shame on you, Kevin Louis Drum.

I suppose the opposite would happen. Iraqis will permit Al Qaeda to operate, until their purposes cross.

Take a thought experiment. China overthrows the US. It becomes clear China is a paper tiger, so local armed militias fill the power vacuum. Here in Georgia, white militias give support to the KKK, who murder at will. Black militias permit the Bloods/Crips to raise hell. After the dust settles, and either the blacks or white are in power (in whatever area they control), the ruling class attack/imprison any anarchists (E.g., KKK/Bloods/Crips).

That makes a hell of a lot more sense.

(Actually, Al Qaeda is going to attack from Pakistan/Afghanistan where we let them flourish.)

ah egbert,

thank you for always starting your posts the same way. that makes it easier for me to skip past it so a don't waste as much as a millisecond reading your silly posts. please keep up the good work.

brian, your inability to understand military matters is demonstrated every time you post. Your analysis was idiotic the first time you posted it. If you had even the vaguest understanding of military issues you might have noticed that there was no Al Queda in Iraq until we got there. You might have noticed that Iraq was a sovereign nation and that, as such, they are entitled to ask us to leave at any time. Even if they invite Osama bin Laden to live in a palace in downtown Baghdad.

We are an occupying force. That's all. And as one observer has already pointed out, we are the reason any Iraqis put up with Al Queda in Iraq.

So over the past 24 months the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting on their own has increased from three to six

Left unaddressed is the question of whom and what they are fighting for. Is it for the central government, or is it their particular ethnic group and/or sect? If all we're training them for is to be better, more efficient killers in the service of an Iranian-allied Shiite theocracy, for example, then why are we doing it?

> There are two wars going on in Iraq.
> The first is between Al Qaeda and the
> United States.

Larry Johnson over at TPMCafe addressed that today:

-----------
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jul/14/abbott_and_costello_update_who_s_iraq_and_what_do_al_qaeda

Within the last week we have been told that Al Qaeda is weaker, Al Qaeda is stronger, Al Qaeda is coming, Al Qaeda is here, and that we are fighting them in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here except, somehow, maybe, they’ve found there way to our shores. Add to this Homeland Security Chief Chertoff’s “gut feeling� that we will be attacked even though there is no credible evidence.
-----------

Al Qaeda is weaker, Al Qaeda is stronger, Al Qaeda is coming, Al Qaeda is here

The situation is fluid. Man the lifeboats!

I realize that it's difficult for wingnuts to pronounce 'withdrawal', but why is it so difficult for them to spell it?

Thanks for the video link Tony. When they pulled off the "surge" by increasing rotations and keeping people beyond their normal tours of duty the administration shot themselves in the foot big time.

"Iraq PM: Country Can Manage Without U.S."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071400463_pf.html

"Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned earlier this week of civil war and the government's collapse if the Americans leave. But al-Maliki told reporters Saturday, "We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want."
::
...one of his [Al-Maliki's] top aides, Hassan al-Suneid, rankled at the assessment, saying the U.S. was treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory." He sharply criticised the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations, embarassing the Iraqi government with its tactics and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in its campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq.
::
"There are disagreements that the strategy that Petraeus is following might succeed in confronting al-Qaida in the early period but it will leave Iraq an armed nation, an armed society and militias," said al-Suneid."
-------
I think we've switched gears to supporting the Shiite government to arming the Sunni Arabs to counterbalance Iran. It could also be an attempt to threaten the government into getting the oil law signed too....

This is why we need those paper ballots in those e-voting machines.

I mean, if the Bushies sees nothing wrong in politicizing the DOJ to garner ill-gotten votes then I bet the Bushies didn’t think anything of fixing e-voting machines either – AND because the GOP doesn’t seem to think that Bush at 26% and Cheney even less than that is some kind of red flag or anything to Republican futures that may fall due to a growing awareness that Bush and the GOP had nothing with what conservative voters value, will then....

This is genuinely odd to me.

Cheney said, “We didn't get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party.�

Cheney isn’t worried about GOP and neither does the RNC seem too concerned either – oh well...

Sen. Lugar and Warren are acting like all these non-binding bills they submit - bills that do nothing and are intended to do nothing won't be remember by the voters come 2008. Dems are playing Repugs to the 2008 deadline but Repugs seem to be insisting on the being played.

Repugs are running like a herd of wildebeest and 2008 is going go a slapstick comedy watching them try to stop the group hurling themselves into a waiting chasm.

Some Republican senator this week asked why the Dems weren't voting to stop the funding of the war in Iraq -and then it occured to me those brave men and woman weren't actually dying in Iraq for nothing - they are dying for cause freedom, not Iraqi freedom but our freedom, freedom from a very corrupt Republican congress.

It wasn't just Bush that was wiretapping, torturing, trashing American laws - it was a completely corrupt Republican congress that saw nothing wrong with what Bush was doing.

And what is our mission again???

Something about WMDs, I thought? Oh, no. It is the War on Arabs, I mean, Terror. My bad.

We spent 19 Billion on training
Wednesday 27 June 2007
The United States has sunk more than 19 billion dollars into training Iraqi forces, but new army and police units still cannot enforce security, a congressional report warned Wednesday.
Four years after the US invasion, 346,500 Iraqi military and police have been trained, but readiness is not evenly spread and there is strong evidence some newly trained troops are committing sectarian violence, the report said.
The study, by a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Armed Services panel, was the latest unflattering assessment of US operations in Iraq, and came as support ebbs for current Iraq policy among Senate Republicans.
The hugely expensive and complicated US mission to train Iraqi forces has had "mixed results," the report said, with Iraqi police forces particularly problematic....

Nouri al-Maliki says, US can leave anytime

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the Iraqi army and police are capable of keeping security in the country when American troops leave "any time they want," though he acknowledged the forces need further weapons and training.
The embattled prime minister sought to show confidence at a time when congressional pressure is growing for a withdrawal and the Bush administration reported little progress had been made on the most vital of a series of political benchmarks it wants al-Maliki to carry out.
Al-Maliki said difficulty in enacting the measures was "natural" given Iraq's turmoil.
But one of his top aides, Hassan al-Suneid, rankled at the assessment, saying the U.S. was treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory." He sharply criticised the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations, embarassing the Iraqi government with its tactics and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in its campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq....

Only fools would stay: Bush, Lieberman, McCain, Cheney, AEI propagandists, Kristol, Kagan(s)....et.al.

It turned out to be a lot harder to liberate Halliburton's oil from under Iraq's desert than they though.

At this rate we'll be able to turn security over to the Iraqis sometime around 2067

Mission Accomplished.

A second war the U.S. is losing is much closer to home. We are losing the war raging on our southern border.

"MEXICO CITY, July 13 -- The San Antonio Express-News, a 230,000-circulation daily, this week withdrew its U.S.-Mexico border reporter after learning of what appears to be an unprecedented plan to assassinate American journalists who frequently write about drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico."

The danger in covering the border war from the other side is a wake up call, if one were needed.

This is a serious war

Journalists and others are at risk in efforts to report from the Mexican side, it only now is being acknowledged.

But so far the dangers in covering the war from the U.S. side . . . Wait! Who is covering the war from the U.S. side? NBC, CBS, ABC, the tabloids, the NYTimes, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times?
No way. The Associated Press? (And isn't it just pathetic that the onece august LATimes floods its pages with stories on its mayor's dating habits while giving the once over lightly to the war raging within spitting distance of its downtown?)

Though a war rages on our southern border, our major news organizations are otherwise occupied -- they have other priorities, Paris Hilton being one, of course.

When will the national media wake up to what is going on at our southern border? When will they station reporters and camera crews there to cover this war? -- the war raging against the very homeland?

Or . . . is there some tacit agreement with someone not to cover the war on our southern border? Hmmmm?

I've never soldiered in anyone's army, so I don't know what the criteria are for a battle-ready battalion, but has it occurred to anyone else that these battalions aren't any more prepared than they were, so much as the standards by which they're measured have gone down?

The problem is obviously not with training Iraqi forces--we've been at this for four years, which by history, is enough time for us to create a couple of million well-trained, veteran troops--see WW II, WW I, and the US Civil War.

The problem is, no one over there wants to be on our side.

The number has gone from 3 to 1 to 10 to 6? I think it's time for the Wall Street Journal to draw a regression curve, but this time they need to make sure it is concave up.

I just did a quadratic regression with (1,3), (2,1), (3,10), and (4,6). The equation is y=-.5x^2+4.3x-2. We are going to have a negative number of batallions in about 4-5 more units of time.

The cubic regression is y=-4x^3+29.5x^2-62.5x+40, which is much worse.

Kevin is correct that the training of Iraqi troops has gone much slower than we wanted it to. He's right that the failure to train them means US troops will need to stay in Iraq longer, and/or will mean that chaos will ensue when our troops leave.

The failure to adquately train Iraqi troops does NOT imply that we should put the Dems in power. Why not? Because Democratic leaders wouldn't do a better job of training Iraqi troops; instead they'd withdraw. That is, the Dems would capitulate to al Qaeda and other terrorists.

Since the problem is inadequate training of Iraqi troops, the solution must be to train them better. Hillary, Obama or Edwards won't do this. To get better training of Iraqi troops, we should elect a military expert like John McCain or elect a superb manager like Mike Bloomberg or Mitt Romney.

The fact that the Republicans have failed the Iraqi people is reason enough to boot their asses from power at the first available opportunity. The fact that the Republicans have failed the American people is reason to boot them right this minute.

Sure, there are people stupid enough to call removing an irritant that is inflaming anti-American sentiment around the word "capitulation," but these people are far too stupid to be taken seriously. These are the kind of stupid people who imagine that Iraq was ever a threat to our national security. The kind of people who would give a drunk the car keys and, when the car is in flame at the bottom of the gorge, insist that the drunk be allowed to drive the car further because no one else has a plan to save the car from terrible damage.

The damage is done moron. Leaving is the only serious response available after all the damage done by George W. Bush's War. Will we need to get the local people's involvement to help staunch the bleeding we've caused? Yes. Will it cost planeloads of money? Yes. But it is still better than spending three billion dollars a week to make things worse.

No Republican officeholder at the federal level can be trusted with national security.

September 2005: The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday... So over the past 24 months the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting on their own has increased from three to six. At this rate we'll be able to turn security over to the Iraqis sometime around 2067.

Don't be so pessimistic. The number of Iraqi level 1 battalions was zero in Feb-Mar 2006; using that as a baseline means we can turn security over to the Iraqis around 2029.

So the number of combat-ready Iraqi battalions, over the last two years or so, has gone from three to one to ten to six ... this does not add up.

It actually went from 10 to 3 to 0 to 10 to 6, and who knows where in between during that period. But as mentioned above, it depends on what criteria you use to define "combat ready" (or "level X"), which appears to be subject to interpretation by the DoD. (While the criteria is suppose to be objective, the details *cough* remain classified.)

Read the article. It said the reduction is due to casualties, equipment wearing out etc. This happens when you're fighting.

Look, what can you about this debacle that hasn't already been said? It is a monumental clusterfuck, plain and simple.

- 3,600 young Americans dead;
- Another 20,000 seriously wounded, including blind, limbless, and quadriplegic veterans;
- An estimated 100,000 will seek help for mental health counseling; and,
- Exposure to depleted uranium (DU) may claim another 10,000, long-term.

And that is just on our side!

- A million refugees from Iraq have flooded into Jordan, Syria, Iran and Turkey;
- Another million are internally displaced within Iraq, living in tents, caves and date groves;
- Estimated 600,000 civilians dead;
- Huge numbers of future cancers, melanoma cases, and birth defects from DU and other causes.

Yeah, some progress.

hehehe: To get better training of Iraqi troops, we should elect a military expert like John McCain or elect a superb manager
Laughable, truly. Like GwB has personally ever had a hand in training the Iraqis.
Several problems exist in training the Iraqi security forces. First, the CPA disbanded the army and when we formed a new one, the Baathists couldn't participate. Of course, most of the officer corps had been Baathist, so tossing them out and refusing to let them back meant the number of trained leaders was very small.
Second, most of the newly formed units were locally recruited. When asked to take up positions in other provinces they deserted. Third, the troops and their officers were loyal to their imam which had rather serious chain of command issues (see 2 above).
Corruption is, was and will be a problem in Iraq. The #s of troops on paper far exceeded the rations drawn. So, the battalions were always understrength.
The ISF is equipped with Eastern Bloc equipment. Their main trucks are Naz and Gaz (Soviet Ukrainian truck factories). The first tanks for the only armored division were T-72s donated by Hungary. There is no other armor, no artillery, no air support, no navy, no logistics. There is a lot of infantry with AK-47s because we won't give them better equipment for fear that those weapons will be used on us. Rather a legitimate concern after all, but an aspect that leaves the Iraqis unable to have a truly stand alone military able to be "a partner in the war on terror".
We'll never be done training these units just like we're never going to leave. The troops and Air Force units are settling into the mega-bases quite nicely.

Report Faults Pentagon Accounting of Iraqi Forces
From Ann Scott Tyson June 27, 2007:
"...The Pentagon "cannot report in detail how many of the 346,500 Iraqi military and police personnel that the coalition trained are operational today," according to the 250-page report. Details of the document were provided to The Washington Post by congressional staff members...
"We have no idea what our $19 billion has gotten us," said Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), chairman of the Armed Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations, noting that the United States investment represents $55,000 per Iraqi recruit...
This report details the complete lack of understanding of who we have trained and what happens to them after we train them," Meehan said. "Many of the forces we have trained are unaccounted for, and others are on the rolls but haven't been vetted," he said, adding that forces "could actually be fighting against us..."

...The subcommittee's report found "strong evidence" that some Iraqi forces trained by the U.S.-led military coalition are involved in sectarian violence and other illegal activities. In addition, the Pentagon "cannot account for whether coalition-issued weapons have been stolen or turned against U.S. forces," the report said...

U.S. military advisory teams placed with Iraqi security forces were formed on an ad hoc basis and were not fully qualified for their mission in 2004 and 2005, it found. U.S. military police units were not deployed to advise the Iraqi police until 2005, and they did not begin to receive training specific to the mission until March 2007, it said..."

Ex-liberal's post is more inane than usual. As TJM points out, the POTUS is not involved with any sort of direct training.

But what those who still support the war refuse to acknowledge is that we invaded Iraq. We are the aggressors.

If the Chinese invaded us, what would we be doing? Eagerly joining battalions that they would train in how to fight "properly"? Mentally smacking ourselves on the head and going, "Yassuh, boss. You'll show us the right way! How could we have been so stupid? How could we not recognize how superior you are?"

And yet that is the attitude that Bush and his supporters STILL expect from the Iraqis!

No, most of us would be out there, hiding when we have to, using our superior knowledge of the terrain and the climate, making guerrilla warfare whenever and wherever possible! Funniest thing, just what the Iraqis are doing!

Since the problem is inadequate training of Iraqi troops,

You are a completely delusional nitwit. The basic problem (for you and only you) is that Iraqis have their own agendas and it does not include snapping sharply into place to make things easy for you Yanks and to ensure your oil contracts and footprints and all. No amount of training will change this fact of diverging interests (though coercive pressures can temporarily bury them). It is so utterly impossible for you to conceive how non-Yanks might perceive things? If you are so blind to this central concern, just stop thinking period cause nothing you come up with is ever going to be worthwhile.

"No, most of us would be out there, hiding when we have to, using our superior knowledge of the terrain and the climate, making guerrilla warfare whenever and wherever possible! Funniest thing, just what the Iraqis are doing!"

The big difference is we wouldn't be making war on ourselves as the Iraqis are doing. They could have had a nice peaceful country with most american soldiers gone a long time ago if they were civilized .

The big difference is we wouldn't be making war on ourselves as the Iraqis are doing.

Try an America that had never really come to grips with its Civil War and had been under the fist of a dictator for the past thirty years with a government almost entirely made up of people from the dictator's home state of Georgie, good old boys he could trust. Your leader had gassed groups of African-Americans some years before (the Chinese made nothing of this at the time though and continued to supply him with weapons) and had massacred groups of Northerners, a group excluded from positions of economic or political power, when they had been encouraged by the Chinese to rise up against him. Oh, and that everyone had to join his Xianist Party to have any hope of any sort of professional advance.

They could have had a nice peaceful country with most american soldiers gone a long time ago
Ah, yes, a nice peaceful satrapy.

Romney is an expert manager. He proved it with the Big Dig.[/snark]

Al-Maliki of Iraq says American troops can leave at any time.

Presumably, in so saying he realizes that when American troops leave the bribes end.

Not all the news is bad.

Pret a Manger has at last made it to U.S. shores.

"Since the problem is inadequate training of Iraqi troops"

Nope, not even close. And since it isn't the problem, your "solution" is worthless.

the thing is that could have happened in America but it didn't

sorry, I missed the part where China invaded you.

we are now truly the land of the free.

Huh? Not from where I'm standing unless you've got a very different understanding of the word than I do.

Would this be the freedom to hold political views? "Are you now or have you ever been a member of..." Even a capitalist like me has gotta watch what I say when I travel your way. And if we've traveled to the wrong places we get sent back at your border.

Would this be the freedom to choose to use drugs that affect no one other than the user? ie. to be responsible for making decisions about yourself. Canadians get sent back at your border for having smoked dope twenty years earlier.

Would this be the freedom to change jobs without worrying about health insurance? Some freedom, clinging on to something you hate because you've no real choice.

Would this be the freedom to marry the person you love? Not with your anti-homosexuality laws.

Would this be the freedom of an adult to make consensual love to another adult? Not in the states with anti-sodomy laws.

Would this be the power to vote and to have your vote counted? The first is actively sabotaged if you're from the wrong voting group and the second has to be taken on trust.

Would this be the freedom to know what your government's up to? You guys used to trump us on this but no longer.

Would this be the freedom to...? Oh, no there's a party that's proudly anti-choice.

And freedom is ultimately about having control over your lives. Freedom bereft of power is meaningless. It's the power of Jim Crow. Here's where greater economic equality and equality of chance come into play. Here too you're sadly lacking.

So sorry, TruthPol, just don't see it. Just don't see it a all. Sorry I can't help you inflate your bubble.

Now if we could just get the democrats to help us protect that freedom.

Well, yeah, I'll agree that far too many Dems are acquiesing in things like suspension of habeus corpus, But of course, you guys are so free you don't need these marks of freedom anymore.

Here's a clue, when you have to reach back to the 19th Century to find a time when your party was on the right side of a fight, your party has a lot of nerve complaining that someone else's party should change.

For a long time the Democratic Party had a large contingent of racists and regressives, but that started changing under FDR. Since those people didn't just vanish they needed a place to go. In 1968 they found their home in the Republican Party. It took more than 20 years for some of the dead wood to leave the Democrats, but by and large the Democratic Party stands for things that American Patriots can be proud to support. As snicker-snack points out, their biggest problem is acquiescence to the demands of the un-American Republicans.

The Republican tragedy has been that the party started to betray its noble roots almost from the moment of their victory over slavery. But the downward trajectory in the last four decades has been stunning. From Nixon and his paranoid attempts to subvert the electoral system and secret bombings that destabilized nations to Reagan & Bush's arming of terrorists to the final indignity that is Bush the dumber's Presidency.

The United States Army isn't protecting our freedom. It was being used as a campaign tool and now it lies broken and bleeding on the sands of George Bush's ego.

Someone mentione upthread that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday said that "Americans can leave anytime - we don't need them".

So what the fuck are we waiting for? We should have a race to see which platoon can pack their gear and race across the border to Kuwait first. From there, there should be fleets of ships and cargo planes waiting to take these brave young men and women home where they belong.

DO IT! DO IT NOW!!!

Wasn't it just yesterday that the US military had to battle Iraqi police to capture a "rogue" police leader? But that's OK, I'm sure he had connections to Al Qaeda, Iran, Spectre, and the Killer Rabbit.

Golly, I wonder how many "rogue" military leaders we are training in the Iraqi forces and when they'll turn on us?

RSA wrote:

"So if now six battalions can operate independently, we're talking about fewer than 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, perhaps far fewer. For a different perspective, Bush was talking last year about there being 130 Iraqi battalions fighting in the field. Six out of 130 is less than 5%. That doesn't bode well for success."
_______________________

The ability to function independently is primarily a matter of unit leadership, though not exclusively so. Such leadership is not grown overnight, especially in Middle Eastern armies, which historically have always had a bias against encouraging too much independence in the middle officer ranks. There is also the tendency to consider one's rank and position first as a personal source of wealth and influence and as a duty second. Anyone who's dealt with Middle Eastern militaries have seen these phenomena too often.

Anyway, our judgement about independent capability is a might more stringent than most in the world. Our own battalion leadership is very good and our system is designed to make the junior leaders ready for command, regardless of their backgrounds. That's very difficult to instill in a Middle Eastern army. Some props have to be given to USCENTCOM, which refuses to count units that have slipped back for one reason or another.

Beyond leadership, the next largest impediment to independent capability is the lack of a solid logistics base. Here too, we have to overcome some pitfalls, particularly the temptation to make the Iraqi battalions too dependent on our own logistics system, lest we continue pushing money down that rathole damned near forever. Building a unified, standardized, and most importantly, an Iraqi-run logistics system will require centralized planning, an honest acquisition process, and an efficient distribution process. That's hard enough to do in peacetime, let alone war. Sisyphus has it easy by comparison.

The rest of those 130 battalions is probably spread along a spectrum behind those six independently capable units. Many can and do fight well enough, if given enough support, even if from other Iraqi units. In wartime, most armies don't have the luxury of following a strict "pass/fail" model of unit assignments. Many units deemed within only 85% or 75% or 65% of reaching the US standard nevertheless have their duties and must carry on regardless of how they compare to a US unit. An Iraqi battalion or brigade operating at only 50% or 60% of the effectiveness of a comparable US unit is almost certainly more combat effective than an old Saddam-era equivalent.

It's safe to say we're having the same trouble in Afghanistan. It's not a new problem - the Saudi military is much the same at its core, though its logistical system is the best money can buy.

The British took decades, even centuries, developing the skills of their best native levies. Of course, the British didn't have the handicap of wanting to get shut of their native partners just as fast as is decently possible.

Wolfdaughter wrote:

"No, most of us would be out there, hiding when we have to, using our superior knowledge of the terrain and the climate, making guerrilla warfare whenever and wherever possible! Funniest thing, just what the Iraqis are doing!"
_______________________

Not so at all, for a couple of reasons. If we had invaded cold, with no previous history or the absence of their own oppressive regime, what you suggest might have happened. If only 5% of the Iraqi people had taken up arms against us, the coalition would never have made the progress it has made. The vast majority of Iraqis aren't fighting us or even each other, despite old polls that suggest a general bloody-mindedness. Instead, planting IEDs, the most effective weapons deployed against us, often isn't even done by the insurgent gangs themselves. Instead, it has become a high risk source of income for some of the most desperate of the unemployed. Likewise, the suicide bombers largely confine themselves to killing civilians.

Several things help us in this regard. First, though we are invaders, most Iraqis know we want to be gone and that we keenly want them to take over. This isn't simply a matter of Presidential statements, but something the Iraqis hear from our officers every day.

Second, our military discipline is superb. In any comparable situation, even most Western militaries would have given many notorious incidents which would drive the population into the camp of the insurgents. Instead, despite the best efforts of enemy propaganda, there are relatively few dramatic incidents (mainly the same few, recounted over and over) where our troops have not behaved humanely. Those few cases bother our military as much as it does our critics - perhaps more, since the US military expects better of its members, while our critics only expect the worst. Anyone thinking the Chinese would be similarly restrained hasn't studied much Chinese history.

Third, things are gradually, slowly becoming better for the average Iraqi. Aside from in the disputed areas, most Iraqis now enjoy a freedom unknown for decades and most realize that the insurgents, should they succeed, would not be an improvement.

As is absolutely demanded here, of course, it must be noted that the above conditions have not made the Iraq campaign a success, nor can they guarantee success. Failure is certainly a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood. Not because we are invaders, but because the internal divisions are too great, the obstacles too many to overcome. Those divisions and obstacles will continue to exist after we are gone. The theory is that we must give the Iraqis time to become strong enough to survive and take over. Like all wartime theories, it's easier said than done.

Maliki just said his crew can handle it all if we leave. But, doesn't that mean, massacring Sunnis?

Maliki just said his crew can handle it all if we leave. But, doesn't that mean, massacring Sunnis?All in the plan. If Bush can get a "genocide" going, then the libs will go into a frenzy of support for more involvement. Nothing like a genocide to rally the libs, though I'm not sure the Sunnis are black enough to get any sympathy from libs.

How does a conservative spell "progress?"

I.n.t.h.e.c.r.a.p.p.e.r.

Luther: Nothing like a genocide to rally the libs, though I'm not sure the Sunnis are black enough to get any sympathy from libs.

Nothing like genocide to bore conservatives.

I guess the Kurds and Iraqi resistance weren't white enough for conservatives to give a damn when Saddam was butchering them with the aid of a GOP president.

And I guess the Iranians weren't transferring enough oil revenues into Haliburton's coffers when Saddam without cause invaded Iran and butchered its people with chemical weapons.