227,000 "quality" Iraq forces: this means we can leave now, right?

[Sam_Stone]

Yes, I meant Ramadi, not Ramallah.

RTFirefly: None of your links disprove the fact that the Iraqi military has official control over those areas. They can certainly ask for U.S. help, and for special situations no doubt would. They currently have no equivalent of special forces, for example.

I’m not sure there’s any point in playing dueling citations, since anything I come up with can be dismissed as spin or overly optimistic. But here’s one cite from http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,88288,00.html]Military.com which looks like it was originally sourced from USA Today:

BAGHDAD – The U.S. military says 40% of Iraq’s combat battalions are effective enough to have taken the lead role in fighting the insurgency, a key measure for determining when U.S. forces can withdraw.

The U.S. military expects to complete the handover of responsibility to nearly all of Iraq’s army by the end of the year, meaning Iraq’s military will rely on U.S. troops primarily for logistical support and for providing airstrikes and heavy artillery. The main fighting will be conducted by Iraqis.
…
The pace at which the U.S. military has handed control to Iraqi battalions has picked up during the past year, Greer said. In March 2005, there were only three battalions manning their own areas – all in Baghdad, he said.

The Iraqi army is taking control in contested areas, such as parts of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra. “We’re not just giving them the easy areas,” Greer said.

The turnover raises questions about whether the United States is handing responsibility to the Iraqi army before it is ready, said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“If they’re not ready to provide security, there could be a regression,” Krepinevich said.

Some military units are aligned with religious and political factions. Handing over responsibility too quickly could result in arming soldiers more loyal to factions than the national government, he said.

Last month, the U.S. military handed over an area of operation to an entire Iraqi army division in Qadissiya and Wassit provinces, south of Baghdad.

Currently, there are 227,000 Iraqi security forces, which include 106,000 military troops and 121,000 police officers, according to the U.S. military. Greer says recruitment of army cadets has been steady.

The number of trained security forces is not as good a measure of progress as the capabilities of combat units, Greer said. “The battle spaces where Iraqis have actually taken over (are) more of a measure of success,” he said.

Like I said, the news is a mix of good and bad, but it appears to me that steady progress is being made.

[RTFirefly]

@Sam Stone

Yes, I meant Ramadi, not Ramallah.

Gotcha. No harm, no foul.

None of your links disprove the fact that the Iraqi military has official control over those areas.

Bolding mine.

Then saying they’ve got control over those areas, in that sense, is no indicator of progress. Which was what you gave it as an example of.

I’m not sure there’s any point in playing dueling citations, since anything I come up with can be dismissed as spin or overly optimistic. But here’s one cite from Military.com which looks like it was originally sourced from USA Today:

OK, let’s not get into dueling cites - that’s fine with me. We’ll stick with what we’ve got. Let’s look at yours (fixed link, btw):

The Iraqi army is taking control in contested areas, such as parts of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra.

But it’s just official control, like we said. Pretend good news. Sounds like it means something, until you do some minimal prodding.

Currently, there are 227,000 Iraqi security forces, which include 106,000 military troops and 121,000 police officers, according to the U.S. military.

Doesn’t that kind of end the discussion, right there?

I mean, that’s the exact same number that Condi said were quality security forces. So they’re all quality. (We must’ve gotten them from the schools of Lake Wobegon.) So either, by some miracle, all these police and troops have been ascertained to meet some sort of standard of quality (besides being carbon-based lifeforms inhaling and exhaling under their own power), or she’s saying stuff meant to sound like it means the Iraqi security forces are doing better than they are.

Which was kinda my point. Too-good-to-be-true news, courtesy of the highest officials in our Administration.

[RTFirefly]

Three things: one is that I’m not saying no progress is being made. I honestly don’t know. What I can say is it’s too soon to tell what progress, if any, has been made in the past six months.

A second is that it’s easy to tell that most claims of progress made up through last summer were BS, because we’re re-fighting the same battles. Taking Samarra for the fourteenth time (Adelaide: “a payson can develop a bad, bad cold” :)) and the like. So there’s every reason to be skeptical about claims of progress now.

But finally, whether or not there’s real progress now, they’re still blowing smoke up our collective asses. That’s the thesis, if you will, of this thread. Is there really a rebuttal to that? (You seem to concede that there’s at least some of that going on.) If I thought there was, I would’ve put it in GD. And hell, we can still ask for it to be moved there; it’s not like anyone’s flamed anyone else.

[tagos]

We’re in the ‘Vietnamisation’ phase now. Playing a numbers game to conjure up a fig-leaf of ‘honour’ for when we bail and everything goes to hell. The army and police is known to be riven by sectarian rivalries and heavily penetrated by militias. And at the moment is backed up by a massive ongoing bombing campaign.

This is just more whistling in the wind bullshit.

Militia penetration

Kurds in Iraqi army proclaim loyalty to militia

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren’t gaining traction. Instead, some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq’s fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga - the Kurdish militia - and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn’t hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.

“It doesn’t matter if we have to fight the Arabs in our own battalion,” said Gabriel Mohammed, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi army who was escorting a Knight Ridder reporter through Kirkuk. “Kirkuk will be ours.”

Their strategy mirrors that of Shiite Muslim parties in southern Iraq, which have stocked Iraqi army and police units with members of their own militias and have maintained a separate militia presence throughout Iraq’s central and southern provinces. The militias now are illegal under Iraqi law but operate openly in many areas. Peshmerga leaders said in interviews that they expected the Shiites to create a semi-autonomous and then independent state in the south as they would do in the north.

Iraqi Death Squad Caught in the act

Iraq has launched an investigation into claims by the US military that an Iraqi interior ministry “death squad” has been targeting Sunni Arab Iraqis.

The probe comes after a US general revealed the arrest of 22 policemen allegedly on a mission to kill a Sunni.

“We have found one of the death squads. They are part of the police force,” US Maj Gen Joseph Peterson said.

Sunnis have long accused Iraqi forces of operating death squads - but the claims have never been substantiated.

Gen Peterson, who is in charge of training the Iraqi police, told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday that US forces had stumbled across the first evidence of death squads within the interior ministry.

The 22 interior ministry traffic policemen, dressed in police commando uniforms, were arrested in late January at an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Baghdad and asked what they were doing.

They told soldiers they were taking a Sunni man away to be shot dead.

“The amazing thing is… they tell you exactly what they’re going to do,” Gen Peterson said.

Anyone who quotes official figures as an example of how swimmingly things are going is either a fool or a partisan shill.

[tagos]

A good data source.

Iraq Index Brooking Institute pdf

As of Nov 05 (see p 25

november 214,000 Iraq security forces on duty.

40,000 in Level 1 or 2 readiness.

Page 18 - Jan 06 estimate of insurgents 15-20 thousand.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

Here’s a thing that bugs me, from RTFirefly’s Houston Chronicle cite: an American Army captain saying, “What the insurgents know is that we lack the will to go after them. It’s not the American Army that lacks the will; it’s the American people and their leadership.” Boy, doesn’t that just remind you of Vietnam? We’re preparing for failure in Iraq, and when everything goes to hell there, whose fault will it be? Why, mine, of course. That’s right – the war will be lost by all those who lacked the will to persevere – people like me and RTFirefly. So, RTFirefly, you might as well apologize now to George Bush for losing his war. I’m planning to myself.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Sal Ammoniac

We’re preparing for failure in Iraq, and when everything goes to hell there, whose fault will it be? Why, mine, of course. That’s right – the war will be lost by all those who lacked the will to persevere

Hey, look on the bright side: At least we’ve learned one lesson from Vietnam.

[David_Simmons]

@Sal Ammoniac

Here’s a thing that bugs me, from RTFirefly’s Houston Chronicle cite: an American Army captain saying, “What the insurgents know is that we lack the will to go after them. It’s not the American Army that lacks the will; it’s the American people and their leadership.” Boy, doesn’t that just remind you of Vietnam? We’re preparing for failure in Iraq, and when everything goes to hell there, whose fault will it be? Why, mine, of course. That’s right – the war will be lost by all those who lacked the will to persevere – people like me and RTFirefly. So, RTFirefly, you might as well apologize now to George Bush for losing his war. I’m planning to myself.

All this has an eerily familiar ring to it. Where have I have heard this story before? Oh yes, now I remember. It wasn’t the German Army that lost WWI. It was a failure of resolve on the part of the German people.

Plus ça change, plus la mème chose

[RTFirefly]

@Sal Ammoniac

Here’s a thing that bugs me, from RTFirefly’s Houston Chronicle cite: an American Army captain saying, “What the insurgents know is that we lack the will to go after them. It’s not the American Army that lacks the will; it’s the American people and their leadership.” Boy, doesn’t that just remind you of Vietnam? We’re preparing for failure in Iraq, and when everything goes to hell there, whose fault will it be? Why, mine, of course. That’s right – the war will be lost by all those who lacked the will to persevere – people like me and RTFirefly. So, RTFirefly, you might as well apologize now to George Bush for losing his war. I’m planning to myself.

Me too! After all, it’s clear that even though we’ve given them every dollar, every soldier, every gun and tank and rocket that they’ve asked for to fight this war, our thinking and (omigod!) voicing less-than-positive thoughts about this war can by some mysterious alchemy undermine our military’s unbroken string of successes in Iraq.

Not only am I apologizing, but tomorrow morning I’m going to walk up to the front gate of the White House and turn myself in as a traitor to Our Magnificent Leader.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Sam Stone

Like I said, the news is a mix of good and bad, but it appears to me that steady progress is being made.

Ah, but in which direction?

The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.

The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.

The competence of the Iraqi military has been cited as a key factor in when U.S. troops will be able to return home.

[snip]

The battalion, according to the Pentagon, was downgraded from “level one” to “level two” after a recent quarterly assessment of its capabilities.

“Level one” means the battalion is able to fight on its own; “level two” means it requires support from U.S. troops; and “level three” means it must fight alongside U.S. troops.

[Frostillicus]

Freedom is on the march!

[Apos]

Always look on the bright side of life!

[RTFirefly]

@Apos

Always look on the bright side of life!
http://time.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/cavuto200602241.jpg

If you’re interested, we’ve got a debate raging in another Pit thread about that screenshot. Quick summary: Scylla says it’s fake; I’ve pointed out that if it was, Fox News would have already jumped on MMfA with both feet over this. And a coupla people are demanding context, which I can’t provide, but what sort of context could possibly justify something like that? And Starving Artist is contributing the sort of gems only he can come up with, and has no idea why they might be considered inflammatory.

Fun for the whole family.

[RTFirefly]

Apos: I just noticed that your link was to Time magazine’s webspace, not Media Matters for America. Was that photo somewhere where readers could post stuff, or is that an actual Time Magazine shot?