More Spin

Compare and contrast these articles--first, we've got Rummy tasting a giant forkful of chickenshit and saying, "My golly, that's some fine chicken salad!"

Pentagon Report Will Note Iraq Progress

There has been encouraging progress toward stabilizing Iraq, even while insurgents and foreign fighters "remain effective, adaptable and intent on carrying out attacks," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday...

By the way, that's the report due to Congress on July 11th--but Team Bush is filing just a little late (hmmm...wonder if Dubya did that in college?)

Rumsfeld said information about the readiness and performance of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces — one of the most telling measures of progress — would be included in a classified annex to the report but not made public.

I believe that's bureaucratese for "not ready by a long shot." Today's New York Times has more:

Iraqis Not Ready to Fight Rebels on Their Own, U.S. Says

About half of Iraq's new police battalions are still being established and cannot conduct operations, while the other half of the police units and two-thirds of the new army battalions are only "partially capable" of carrying out counterinsurgency missions, and only with American help...

Only "a small number" of Iraqi security forces are capable of fighting the insurgency without American assistance, while about one-third of the army is capable of "planning, executing and sustaining counterinsurgency operations" with allied support, the analysis said.

And, let's not forget, "readiness," or "trained," aren't exactly well defined by this administration--because that would demonstrate what a crock their assessments are. Juan Cole recently published a letter he received from an Australian veteran that gives the Bush administration a swift kick to the teeth when it comes to what constitues a "trained" soldier:

Let me tell you what it takes to train a soldier who comes off the streets and into barracks:

We have to presuppose clean barrack-room accommodation, including decent beds, lavatories, mess halls and showers; arrangements for pay that result in families receiving cash on time; and a welfare system that caters for both recruits and their families. There must be padres for all religious denominations. (Please stop laughing.)

In a recruit training battalion of a thousand or so young men (in Iraq it will be only men) there must be a headquarters staffed by skilled administrators and experts in imparting military skills. Then the requirement for each company of 200 (or so) is for a dedicated staff of six officers, a sergeant major and 4 company office staff, a quartermaster sergeant (and staff), five sergeant instructors, and about 12 corporal instructors. All of these soldiers must have been specially selected for their expertise in administration and instruction. (Not every skilled and brave soldier is by definition either an administrator or an instructor : some of the most courageous soldiers I have ever known have found it impossible to convey their knowledge to others or even understand how they are administered. This tends to frustrate personnel selectors. Mind you : How many personnel selectors has the Iraqi army got?)

All these instructors work their asses off for 12 weeks, for at least 12 hours a day, to produce a basic soldier. And let me emphasize that what they produce is the absolute BASIC soldier -- no more. The product is not a fighting man. He is incapable of employing his individual skills immediately in a team -- a fighting platoon - because there is much more to learn before joining his battalion.

The soldier (we are talking infantry, here ; forget the much longer training for technical arms and the administrative services) then has to go off to specialist training to fit him for his unit. This takes another two months or so. Then his theoretical knowledge is put into practice in the battalion, in which he is a member of a platoon. --- But he will only function reasonably if he joins a trained platoon of skilled soldiers who are themselves a team and who trust their commander and non-commissioned leaders.

Then he is trained in sub-unit tactics and shown where he stands in relation to such grand events as a company attack and so forth. He receives detailed and painstaking instruction about the various phases and types of conflict, such as counter-insurgency warfare. The recruit will not be a reasonably efficient soldier for at least a year. And then he starts to really learn his trade.

And my picture is that all this instruction of recruits takes place in peacetime, in a non-threatening environment, with instructors who are not only highly-skilled but speak their own language (training in Afghanistan is a linguistic nightmare for Afghan instructors, never mind the foreigners).

I could go on and on. But I think you might get the message : the training system for Iraqi soldiers is a very sad joke. Rumsfeld's pronouncements about the number of "trained" soldiers are ridiculous and wicked lies. The man is not in touch with reality.

There are some Iraqi military units in uniform. At best they are brutally incompetent. They are not soldiers because they have not been trained to be soldiers. This is a terrible legacy by the invaders. But what else did we expect?

In other words, we're not even talking "at the level of ARVN forces." That'd require some improvement.