Iraqi forces frail as U.S. troops head home

[unhappycamper]

Iraqi forces frail as U.S. troops head home
By Lara Jakes - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 26, 2010 6:13:53 EDT

MOSUL, Iraq — When the U.S. ends its combat mission in Iraq five weeks from now, the nation's safety will be in the hands of its homegrown, American-trained security forces. The army is almost up to the job, the police are hit-and-miss, and the Kurdish militia is nowhere close to ready.

Iraq's military chief says that without a U.S. presence, the Iraqi forces won't be able to fully fend for themselves before 2020. Anthony Cordesman, a former director of intelligence assessment in the Pentagon, agrees it will take years.

That view has also come across in conversations on various sides of the sectarian divide in recent months as the Associated Press spent time with the military, police and Kurdish militia on the job to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses as they prepare for the Aug. 31 deadline for the U.S. combat mission to end.

To be sure, Iraq's security forces have made great strides since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, after which his army was disbanded and the once-feared police were jeered as toothless. U.S. commanders say violence is down by more than half since a year ago, when American troops pulled out of Iraqi cities, and has dropped 90 percent since October 2007 — the peak of the U.S. military surge in Iraq.

But bombings still happen almost daily across Iraq, often targeting the security forces. Drive-by shootings and kidnappings are common. And despite at least $22 billion the U.S. has spent on training and equipping the forces since 2004, many of the problems that have long plagued the army and police remain unresolved.



unhappycamper comment: Only another ten more years of this nonsense. grrr

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Nixon's Vietnamization of Troops worked so well

in an illegal war.

Sounds like Iraq will be a golden goose for years for American contractors
and I'm willing to bet the US taxpayers will feed the goose.

[Xipe Totec]

2. It's the same people on both sides of the conflict

Once we remove ourselves from this fracas, it will be just them vs them.

Why would the same people fight more fiercely on the other side?


Something to think about.

[Possumpoint]

3. For Over 1100 Years

the Sunni and Shiites have be fighting and killing each other. Who are we to think that 7 years of our intervention will change anything.

[DCBob]

4. Its their country.. if they want to save it, they will have to fight for it.

The sooner we get out of there the better. That war was wrong from beginning to end.