PENTAGON ADMITS IRAQI TROOP LACK

During the 2004 elec­tion, the President and his team talked end­lessly about the count­less bat­tal­ions of Iraqi troops that were help­ing out the coali­tion in its coun­terin­sur­gency fight. On May 15 of last year, for exam­ple, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told Wolf Blitzer that “we now have 200,000 Iraqi secu­rity forces that are out there pro­vid­ing secu­rity in their coun­try, and frankly, being killed them­selves.“
But the Pentagon’s sup­ple­men­tal bud­get bill, released yes­ter­day, shows just how hol­low those words were. In fact, the Defense Department now admits in a $5.7 bil­lion request to train local troops, there are hardly any Iraqi forces that are able to put up a fight.

The Iraqi Interim and Transitional Governments, with Coalition assis­tance, have fielded over 90 bat­tal­ions in order to pro­vide secu­rity within Iraq dur­ing a period of an intense coun­terin­sur­gency cam­paign that was designed to sup­press the devel­op­ment of democ­racy. All but one of these 90 bat­tal­ions, how­ever, are lightly equipped and armed, and have very lim­ited mobil­ity and sus­tain­ment capa­bil­i­ties. These lim­i­ta­tions, cou­pled with a more resilient insur­gency than antic­i­pated when the Iraqi Security Forces were ini­tially designed, have led the Prime Minister of Iraq to request forces that can par­tic­i­pate in the “hard end” of the coun­terin­sur­gency, and to do so quickly. (Emphasis mine. And yeah, I caught the lit­tle Bushism, too.) 

February 15th, 2005 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.