Training
So maybe the Iraqis need some better training. Thomas E. Ricks writes in The Washington Post:
It would take time, money and expertise to correct the failures of the Iraq war policy, and even then it's an open question whether better training and more troops would make a big difference. It would have been a great challenge even if things had been handled properly from the beginning.
The issue is not one of will nor patriotism, it's one of facing facts. The desperate searching for any way to salvage this fiasco shows how unlikely the war in Iraq is to end well. It's a sobering time for all Americans, or it should be.
Nor should there be recriminations against uniformed military personnel. It was the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, chiefly Donald Rumsfeld, who brought about this disaster, along with the rest of the neo-con cabal. Full Congressional hearings into the conduct of the war in Iraq must be held as soon as possible, starting in January.
There will continue to be those on the right who think brave talk and political attacks are a substitute for living in the reality based world, but as the election showed, they are a minority and are being marginalized by the day. It's time for the actual grown ups to go about the business of trying to clean up the neo-con mess.
The U.S. military's effort to train Iraqi forces has been rife with problems, from officers being sent in with poor preparation to a lack of basic necessities such as interpreters and office materials, according to internal Army documents.The full article paints a very bleak picture, unfortunately. These are uniformed military personnel speaking on the record.
The shortcomings have plagued a program that is central to the U.S. strategy in Iraq and is growing in importance. A Pentagon effort to rethink policies in Iraq is likely to suggest placing less emphasis on combat and more on training and advising, sources say.
---snip---
One of the most common complaints of the Army officers interviewed was that the military did a poor job of preparing them. "You're supposed to be able to shoot, move and communicate," said Lt. Col. Paul Ciesinski, who was an adviser in northern Iraq last year and this year. "Well, when we got to Iraq we could hardly shoot, we could hardly move and we could hardly communicate, because we hadn't been trained on how to do these things." The training was outdated and lackadaisical, he said, adding sarcastically: "They packed 30 days' training into 84 days."
It would take time, money and expertise to correct the failures of the Iraq war policy, and even then it's an open question whether better training and more troops would make a big difference. It would have been a great challenge even if things had been handled properly from the beginning.
The issue is not one of will nor patriotism, it's one of facing facts. The desperate searching for any way to salvage this fiasco shows how unlikely the war in Iraq is to end well. It's a sobering time for all Americans, or it should be.
Nor should there be recriminations against uniformed military personnel. It was the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, chiefly Donald Rumsfeld, who brought about this disaster, along with the rest of the neo-con cabal. Full Congressional hearings into the conduct of the war in Iraq must be held as soon as possible, starting in January.
There will continue to be those on the right who think brave talk and political attacks are a substitute for living in the reality based world, but as the election showed, they are a minority and are being marginalized by the day. It's time for the actual grown ups to go about the business of trying to clean up the neo-con mess.
