We can't wait for the Iraqi army to stand up...

[dEMOK]

Source: San Fransisco Chronicle

Joel Brinkley
Sunday, July 8, 2007

BY OCTOBER 2005, the Iraq war was almost 2 years old but already seemed to have been under way forever. The United States had been training Iraqi troops for about a year, and in an assessment for Congress that month, the military said the Iraqi army would not be ready for "autonomous operations for at least a year."

To defeat the insurgency, the Pentagon said then, the United States would have to train and equip 325,000 soldiers and police -- by 2007.

Last month, the House Armed Services Committee noted in a report that Iraq's army and police now number almost 350,000. And yet, in congressional testimony last month, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who was in charge to the training program, offered a highly qualified new estimate of when Iraqi forces might be able to take over control of the country.

"By the end of the year, potentially," he said. But autonomous operations, the 2005 goal, still remain "a ways off." Brig. Gen Dana Pittard, who is still in Iraq, training Iraqi troops, predicted: "It'll take years."<snip>

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/08/EDGOTQ8JC01.DTL

[hobbit709]

1. The clowns in charge don't want the Iraqi army to stand up

If the Iraqis could handle their own security we would have to leave. and Halliburton doesn't want to stop its lucrative looting of both the U.S. Treasury and the Iraqi resources.

[dEMOK]

2. Could you please...

...stop making sense?

[glowing]

3. Exactly, and they were told going into Iraq, "don't disband the army"

Keep them together trained like they were under Saddam... As soon as the army was disbanned, they ran for the hills and grabbed up all the weapons they new about, and started fighting against the US occupation. We shouldn't have gone in there in the first place... it is the mess that I said it would be when everyone was biting off my head trying to get there.

[frogcycle]

4. lying fucks

the Iraqi army CAN do it. They just have to have to{/em]

Oh, the form of government might have to be totalitarian, with mandatory conscription, and harsh penalties for desertion, but they can damned well do it. The very people who are joining militias and insurgencies, getting surreptitious training in making IED's, in sniper schools are the ones who would be pressed in to service and told "shut down the carnage or you're toast"

By saying we can't leave until their karma moves them to step up, our administration and its hand-picked toadies now leading the military are claiming a paternal, colonial, imperialist right over the Iraqi people as incompetent children whom we must continue to "help" (dominate). And from whom we must suck vast quantities of oil.

[High Plains]

11. Where's Saddam when we need him?

Oops, we killed the strong man.

[cureautismnow]

5. They WERE standing up...

... until we invaded.

[rasputin1952]

6. A hard lesson in reality....

If you can get someone else to fight and die for you, there is no incentive to protect yourself. Most sane individuals realize that there is no point in oneself dying, if others are "willing" to so it for you.

In a "win-win" situation, the Iraqi's get a well equipped military and don't have to use it. In a "lose-lose" situation...Coalition forces go into battle, get maimed and killed w/o dedicated Iraqi support.

[dEMOK]

7. If we were "invited" to invade Iraq...

...it would be just a little bit easier to criticize Iraqi's for not stepping up?

[rasputin1952]

8. The "invited" situation has been used many times before...

no one asks for an invasion though, generally they ask for help...Saddam certainly did not ask for "help".

bush is wholly to blame for this fiasco...he is, after all, the "decider guy"...:D

[Jacobin]

10. They ARE fighting for themselves

The true Iraqi army consists of the insurgency which is about to run our sorry asses out of their country.

This pretend Iraqi army that we train is nothing more than insurgents in training who leave to join the insurgency.

Its all smoke and fucking mirrors.

[rasputin1952]

12. I have thought that this whole thing has been nothing but arming...

people who will turn those arms against their own as soon as the find it feasible. The coming bloodbath is too horrible to contemplate.

The whole notion of "settling old scores", is beyond our comprehension. Middle Eastern culture is completely different from what we are generally exposed to. People hold grudges for many generations, and are proud to act in what they believe are honor bound ideals. We should have learned in WWII, from the Japanese, what price fanaticism will pay, but bush and his cronies can think in only one dimension, they believe they have all of the wisdom the world has too offer, and yet they forgot the base tenet in military thinking....First, know your enemy.

Hell, they can't even get democracy right, and they want to expand their version upon a world that does not want it.

We will be paying for this for generations. bush is the epitome of idiocy, and his minions haven't a clue...they live in a phantom world, fantasizing about nothing but wealth they can acquire.

The evil is palpable.

[Jacobin]

9. They ARE standing up

The Iraqi army consists of the insurgents who are kicking our asses. The people we pay to join the flunkie government's army that we set up are traitors to their country. Most join, get a gun and some training and then leave for the insurgency.